OpenSocial
OpenSocial is a public specification that defines a component hosting environment (container) and a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web applications. Initially, it was designed for social network applications. It was developed by Google along with MySpace and several other social networks. Recently, it has been adopted as a general use runtime environment for allowing untrusted and partially trusted components from third parties to run in an existing web application. The OpenSocial Foundation moved to integrate or support numerous other Open Web technologies. This includes OAuth and OAuth 2.0, Activity Streams, and Portable Contacts, among others. It was released on November 1, 2007. Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs are interoperable with any social network system that supports them. At launch, OpenSocial took a one-size-fits-all approach to development. As it became more robust and the user-base expanded, OpenSocial modularized the platform to allow developers to only include the parts of the platform it needed. On December 16, 2014, the W3C issued a press release, "OpenSocial Foundation Moving Standards Work to W3C Social Web Activity", stating that OpenSocial would no longer exist as a separate entity, and encouraging the OpenSocial community to continue development work through the W3C Social Web Activity in the Social Web Working Group and Social Interest Group. The OpenSocial Foundation stated that "the community will have a better chance of realizing an open social web through discussions at a single organization, and the OpenSocial Foundation board believes that working as an integrated part of W3C will help reach more communities that will benefit from open social standards." Structure Based on HTML and JavaScript, as well as the Google Gadgets framework, OpenSocial includes multiple APIs for social software applications to access data and core functions on participating social networks. Each API addresses a different aspect. It also includes APIs for contacting arbitrary third-party services on the web using a proxy system and OAuth for security. In version 0.9, OpenSocial added support for a tag-based language. This language is referred to as OSML and allows tag-based access to data from the OpenSocial APIs that previously required an asynchronous client-side request. It also defined a rich tag template system and adopted an expression language loosely based on the Java Expression Language. Starting in version 2.0, OpenSocial adopted support for Activity Streams format. History Background OpenSocial is commonly described as a more open cross-platform alternative to the Facebook Platform, a proprietary service of the popular social network service Facebook. Development OpenSocial was rumored to be part of a larger social networking initiative by Google code-named "Maka-Maka", which is defined as meaning an "intimate friend with whom one is on terms of receiving and giving freely" in Hawaiian. Implementation An open-source project, Shindig, was launched in December 2007 to provide a reference implementation of the OpenSocial standards. It has the support of Google, Ning, and other companies developing OpenSocial-related software. The Myspace OpenSocial parser was released as project Negroni in January 2011 and provides a C#-based implementation of OpenSocial. Apache