Father of web 2.0 slams Google OpenSocial

Tim O'Reilly, the father of the term 'web 2.0', has denounced Google's OpenSocial as "boring" and a "full blown disappointment"..

OpenSocial offers a standard for applications on social networks that allow developers to market applications on any network supporting the standard. Early supporters include Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace and Google's Orkut.

The standard does not unlock data from the participating network, however, which might have allowed a MySpace user to exchange messages with a LinkedIn user, for example.

The service also will not allow the use of social search engines that let users locate friends across all networks.

In a posting on a company blog, O'Reilly described the lack of data sharing as a "fundamental failure " to understand two key principles of web 2.0: open data and loosely coupled applications or services.

"If all OpenSocial does is allow developers to port their applications more easily from one social network to another, that's a big win for the developer as they get to shop their application to users of every participating social network," wrote O'Reilly.

"But it provides little incremental value to the user [who is] the real target. We do not want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks."

O'Reilly heads up O'Reilly Media, a well known publisher of books for developers. He is also credited with coining the term 'web 2.0'.

Originally used during a conference on new media in 2004, the term is used and abused by online services such as mashups and Digg.

O'Reilly pointed out that Google Maps has been a token example of web 2.0 because it allowed developers to embed the maps on their own website and combine them with data from outside sources.

If Google had taken the OpenSocial approach with Google Maps, it would have created a service that allowed developers to create mapping applications across Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. O'Reilly summarised such a service as "boring".

A reader commenting on O'Reilly's rant pointed out that Google plans to release an addition to the service dubbed the People Data API, although it is not clear exactly what the API would enable.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Web 2.0 之父公开炮轰Google OpenSocial

Tim O'Reilly是O'Reilly媒体公司CEO，“Web2.0”一词的发明人。近日他公开炮轰Google的OpenSocial，称它“无趣（boring）”并“非常令人失望（full blown disappointment）”

OpenSocial为社交网络的应用提供了一套标准，早期的支持者包括Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace 和Google的Orkut。

这个标准不对合作网络提供数据，但是可以这样，比方说：MySpace的用户可以与 LinkedIn 的用户交换信息。这项服务同样不允许使用社交搜索引擎，而社交搜索引擎可以让用户搜索到真个互联网上的朋友。

O'Reilly称数据的无法共享说明OpenSocial从根本上没有理解Web 2.0两大原则：数据开放和松耦合服务应用。

“如果OpenSocial真的可以使开发者更方便地将应用从一个社交网络转移到另一个，那绝对是巨大的成功，”O'Reilly说，“但是，社交网络真正的受众是用户，OpenSocial对他们提供的价值很少。用户不希望在所有的社交网络上都拥有同样的应用，而且用户需要多个社交网络的不同数据。”

Tim O'Reilly在2004年的一次会议上提出了“Web2.0”一词，并迅速传播成为一种描述用语。他之前曾称 Google Maps是典型的Web 2.0应用，因为Maps允许开发者将maps植入个人网页，而同时又能获取外部资源的数据。

不过，Google 计划向OpenSocial添加一项服务：People Data API，虽然目前还不清楚这个API是做什么的。

Google尚未就Tim O'Reilly的言论发表任何回复。