I have often wondered( when I receive mails from different folks inviting me to be a member of several social networking sites they were members of)oops, hear comes one more social network membership! I was always left overwhelmed. Where is the time for me to become a member of one more social network and interact. Being an active user of linked-in, I have always felt, what if I had a way to get everyone of my contacts across all social networks into linked-in, be it professional and personal.
I think Open Social from Google just does that. Open Social provides a platform for aggregation of Social networks into the social network site of your choice. It's Google's solution of a connector like app for social networks. There are some lovely business application demos from Linked-in & salesforce.com there. I am sure there will a lot more applications, more than just business applications, which will help me get connected to my contacts and connections in Linked-in, wherever they are in any social network.
At the start of the year, I had read 2007 will be the year of Widgets and it's coming alive with this innovation from Google. I am sure there will be a lot more application development around this code but this is according to me is just the beginning. I believe this is going to have some profund impact on how data, information & interests about consumers will get shared and also how businesses will get a lot more collaborative in the future.
Take a look at the launch video: