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Three Minutes With Google's OpenSocial Director
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: There has also been talk of whether OpenSocial should address data portability. What's Google's latest position on that?
[Data portability and standard social-application-development APIs] are parallel issues that are both interesting and can both be addressed, but they don't have to be coupled. We thought about where we can help things move forward quickest and decided it best to separate these two things.
:   How important is it, or not, to have Facebook on board with OpenSocial?
That's up to users and developers to answer. The benefit of a standard is it helps people reach more users more quickly, and we welcome anyone who chooses to implement the standard if it makes sense for them. The nature of the Web is a playing field that tilts towards openness and interoperability, and it's great anytime anyone makes a move towards open interoperable applications in the world of social [applications], but everyone should make their own decisions and do what's right for their business.
: Yet, today Facebook is probably the most attractive platform for this type of application.
Moving from a world in which you have 12 different ways to build an application to a world in which you have six, and then two and then one, every one of those steps makes things better.
: You recently announced that Orkut's OpenSocial container is ready and that you'll soon begin making OpenSocial applications available for Orkut users. Is that correct?
Yes, the Orkut sandbox, which is the developer limited-access site, is running the launch version of the API, and there's a whole community of developers building applications for it right now. We're on the countdown to opening that up to consumers.
: What's the next big OpenSocial milestone or announcement we should be looking out for?
: There's a set of launch milestones. As Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 and others that have announced imminent plans open the doors of their OpenSocial applications to consumers, there'll be a wave of those. The next step will be watching the interaction between users and developers on these different sites: seeing what kinds of feedback they get from users, seeing developers come up with new creative ideas and seeing the sites work to enable that. That's what we're looking forward to: opening the doors and watching the party get started.
