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With Salesforce and LinkedIn both named as "hosts" for Google's new OpenSocial APIs, the question on many minds seems to be what changes, if any, will customers see at the respective companies over the next few months.
Indeed, Google is giving its OpenSocial partners the freedom to call the shots, more or less, so we checked in with representatives from LinkedIn and Salesforce to see what, precisely, OpenSocial will mean for their end users. Turns out, we heard pretty much the same thing: the open set of APIs will not only mean better business and professional apps/services, but more of them. Strong emphasis on business and professional.
"We have the largest global professional network with users from all the Fortune 500 companies," says Adam Nash (pictured right), senior director of products at LinkedIn. "Because of that, our aim has always been to provide as many useful professional apps a possible. OpenSocial fits exactly into that message."
Nash says LinkedIn users will probably see the impact of the new partnership with Google sometime in early 2008, although it won't necessarily be about connecting with other social networks, as some have suggested. "What you'll see in the end, is great 3rd party developers making even more business apps for us very soon," he said.
In fact, the company is going to demo one such app called the Conference Calendar tomorrow evening at a Google event. According to Nash, the new app will automatically know what industry you work in (based on your LinkedIn profile) and subsequently spit out a series of relevant upcoming conferences based on this info.
The calendar will also list who, in other social networks, will be there (so you can hook up at the conference), as well as display anyone who just might happen to live in the same city -- you know, for some can catch up while you're in town.
Adam Gross, vice president of development and marketing at Salesforce, also says he expects OpenSocial will do wonders for his company's ability to provide its customers with even more useful data. Admitting that his company has a tendency of borrowing from consumer oriented apps and then incorporating certain technologies into Salesforce's own business-centric apps, Gross says OpenSocial will make that practice even easier.
"This continues a trend of using consumer technologies to make business technologies better," Gross says.
"From my point of view, OpenSocial is really about the widget economy we've seen in a short amount of time build up around social networking," he added. "OpenSocial is energizing that economy now as developers work can be translated to different contexts and platforms."
In that sense, Google's open APIs will "pour even more fuel on a rapidly burning fire."
"Essentially, it opens up all that creativity and innovation that we're see in social apps and widgets and allows us to make our business apps better," Gross says.
