Open Source rocks, so it can only be expected that a partnership between mobile phone companies, software developers, and hardware manufacturers figured out how good it would be for them to adopt open standards. This is not my typical post, just something I am excited about, so read more at a few places like Official Google Blog: Where’s my Gphone?, gizmodo, engadget, or wherever.

My roommate just informed me about Google moving into social networking. I wrote a post about what I had heard yesterday, but today is a new day, right?

Here is a snipet from the article above:

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com

Simply put, Google has created a distributed social network framework that will end up competing with Facebook and MySpace (and Bebo in markets like the UK). It is kind of a ‘third place’ of social networks - and it is a huge boost to the less populous or more specialized social networks such as Ning, Hi5 and our old friend Friendster.

It’s not entirely clear yet what the benefits will be to users. I assume there will be some interoperability - e.g. when a user joins up to a Ning social network, there may be hooks into their Friendster profile and data. Will this be the full ‘export’ functionality that industry people like Marc Canter have been crying out for? It remains to be seen. I think it’s fair to assume there won’t be an export function from OpenSocial to Facebook or MySpace, at this point anyway. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

This is the beginning of opening up the walled gardens of current social networks, but the biggest player, myspace, is joining in on the Open Social fun. I am curious to see what kind of apps come out of this move, and how they will benefit the end user. After facebook opened up their api to developers, I saw lots of crazy apps that could be fun, but were mostly pointless (vampire, super wall, too many to list). Just as email has become ubiquitous because of its (mostly) open standards nature, social networks may turn into more useful tools, and less teenage time wasters.

Another article by Tech Crunch enumerates the benefits to developers by having an open system with a standard framework to build their applications on.

If you have never used Technorati, it is a great service to search blogs, and find recent posts about issues. Here is my profile on Technorati, check it out sometime.

Here are some interesting things I have read about recently. I am a huge advocate of open source, and have been frustrated with the so called “Walled Gardens” of social networks. I am not by any means an expert on these concepts, so here are a few other people’s blogs, and what they have to say on social networking, open source, and some plans Google has to change all that.

A very through analysis of the state of social networking, and the possible trend towards open api

Life hacker’s opinion on opening up the social network communities.

Interesting article by IT Manager’s Journal on open source business strategies. They are able to be competitive, and profitable, it just requires work to understand where a companies real value is, and give away the rest (one open source business model I find interesting).
Here are several social networking sites I use personally
Linkedin
Facebook
Plaxo

Here is an article talking about the possibility of Google doing a 3 dimensional social network

And more big announcements by Google, the giant choosing to open up their platform even more, to allow third party software to interface with all of Googles online goodies.

I like using some of these websites/tools/take-over-your-digital-life, but I wonder how many of these I will be using in a few years. Sure I am single, carry my laptop with me everywhere, and feel lost if I have not gone online in a day, but I don’t really have a life now, what if I ever get one? One day we may find a balance between the things we do online, and how those affect our real world experiences. I hope my digital life can enrich my real life, and not take it over. (and I am not talking about second life here, just in case you caught an unintentional reference)