Open Social - Google making progress

Here at Mashup Camp Chris Schalk from Google just wrapped up an excellent presentation about Open Social - the open source social networking environment spearheaded by Google along with partners like Myspace, Ning, Plaxo, and hundreds more.

Shindig, the ¨container" for social applications, appears to be ready for outtside development now. The lack of a container was a concern at the initial launch of Open Social.

One can make a strong case that Open Social and the Open Handset Alliance are the most significant open source projects now under broad deployment, both because they are backed by Google dollars and ingenuity as well as a legion of potential partnerships, and because they are helping with the mass migration of data, services, and people to open architectures where users are the key players in the online equation rather than the website creators or service providers.

Facebook does not currently support Open Social and remains something of a wildcard because Facebook is often a key component of good social media strategy. However developers can easily deploy both for Open Social and for Facebook and thus cover most of the bases.