Platforms 2

Google has launched OpenSocial. It's basically a set of APIs that social network sites can expose so that developers can write apps. I still want to explore it, but it looks killer. At the moment, FaceBook is the only big player not supporting it, but I'm sure they'll jump on soon. The prospect of write once, run lots of places is a good proposition for small developers as it helps them get great exposure.

One thing I'm interested in though, is whether or not the API provides a "single sign on" type mechanism. So, let's say I have an app written for MySpace, then the same user adds it on Orkut. Will my app know it's the same person? I'm guessing that it will be up to my app to do this identification by having some sort of login/account entry for each site. What would be perfect is if the API used a common user identifier. Maybe I'll suggest it to Google ...

TBC