Be A Revolutionary!

On May 12, 2011, the OpenSocial community came together for the annual State of the Union event. That day will be remembered as the start of the “Open App Revolution!” (#openapprevolution)  A special thank you to Google, who was kind enough to host us at their offices in San Francisco, CA. (Tweet: “Thanks Google & Paul Lindner for hosting the OpenSocial State of the Union #ossotu #OpenSocial #openapprevolution”)

The event featured were a number of prominent speakers at the event discussing what’s coming in OpenSocial 2.0. Monica Wilkenson and Evan Prodromou discussed the value of Activity Streams and the importance of aligning this work with the spec. Several folks from IBM, Ryan Baxter, & Andrew Davis, demonstrated how OpenSocial based applications can be embedded directly in the stream. 

Even more exciting was work that is being done to enable apps on mobile devices. Jason Gary, Andy Smith, also from IBM, showed the same OpenSocial application running on seven different mobile devices. Jason & IBM committed to the OpenSocial community to have all the code contributed to Apache Shindig! This is great news for the community and will significantly advance and accelerate apps on mobile! (Tweet: “Can’t wait for Road Trip and Chassis to be in Shindig!!-Thx Jason #openapprevolution”)

Paul Lindner discussed the roadmap for Apache Shindig. Most implementations of OpenSocial are based on Shindig, and his presentation demonstrated how vibrant and active development is on the code base. This was followed by Chris Cole demonstrating the simplicity and power of the advanced features of OpenSocial, including templating and data-pipelining. Matt Null from Survey Gizmo talked about his experience building an application that works on three different containers, Jive, SAP, and iGoogle—with more to come.  

We concluded the State of the Union with an engaging panel discussion the focused on the business value of building applications and the economics of app markets. The panel consisted of Chris Kohlhardt from Gliffy, Ryan Nichols from Appirio, Mark Halvorson from Attlasian, Jeff Hotchkiss from Xobni, and was moderated by Robin Bordoli of Jive. You can find many of the slides from the event on the OpenSocial wiki. We'll continue to post the videos as we get them. 

2011 – The year of Business Applications

2010 was more than just a growth year for OpenSocial. With the expanded set of consumer targeted social networks, an increase in domain specific social networks, and the adoption of OpenSocial as a platform technology by enterprise vendors, OpenSocial has established itself as the fundamental technology driver of the app based economy.  In 2011 we will see application market places from enterprise vendors like Jive, Xobni, and Atlassian—all based on OpenSocial.

Open technology is the foundation of the Web. This is the time for application providers to leverage these platforms and market places to break down the barriers of software acquisition, open up new delivery channels, and change the way business gets done. Innovative companies like Gliffy and Surveygizmo are great examples of the new way to build and deliver powerful business applications.

The time is NOW for an Open App Revolution.

This is YOUR call to arms. 

Be A Revolutionary!

Posted by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundation

Xobni Opens Outlook to Developers via OpenSocial API

At Xobni, we’ve long been fans and part of the OpenSocial community and are pumped to be bringing this philosophy to Microsoft Outlook.

As the leading add-on for Outlook, the Xobni team has invested years learning how to live nicely in the software. It sure ain’t easy, and it’s not been cheap, but it’s worth it.

The average Outlook user spends north of 30% of their day in email. So we’ve got some pretty incredible real estate on the 7 million installs of Xobni. The rest of user’s computer time is spent bouncing back and forth between browsers, software and services. To chip away at this bounce, we began bringing third party content directly into Outlook via the Xobni sidebar in 2009. We started with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These gadgets are still a favorite feature among our users – and play to Bill Gates’ statement in 2008 that Xobni is “the next generation of social networking.”

Today, we’re unveiling the OpenSocial-powered Xobni Gadget Store, providing developers with an easier path into Outlook. We believe that this will enhance users’ productivity and engagement with the services they use and love, and let developers benefit from our experience (good and bad) in Outlook.

Xobni Gadget Store = OpenSocial + Contextual Gadgets + Xobni Data

Xobni has created an OpenSocial container on top of the interesting data Xobni already discovers for you from your email. Basically, Xobni knows who you know – and how important they are to you (Xobni Rank). This effectively means that we build a social graph from your inbox, and provide access to that graph to your trusted services through the OpenSocial API. Gadgets can be viewed in the Xobni sidebar (“profile” view) or in the email message body (“card” view, similar to the Gmail contextual gadget implementation).

Here are a handful of the 20 gadgets announced today that are now available in the new Xobni Gadget Store. Each gadget offers a personalized experience based on the related email or profile.

• Evernote – take and search for notes on a person or company, and have your notes automatically associated with their email address or Xobni profile.
• Dropbox – quickly choose files to share with anyone in your inbox
• JIRA – Get a real-time view of any bug mentioned or linked to in an email. Make edits to the bug, add comments, re-assign, and more – without leaving Outlook.
• Salesforce – Create a Salesforce contact or lead from any Xobni profile; view existing records as well.
• WebEx – Schedule a one-click meeting or schedule a meeting in advance without needing to leave Outlook. See upcoming meetings and quickly send reminders to the tardy folks

We’re proud to be the first company to bring OpenSocial platform to Outlook in a meaningful way. We believe that extending the reach of the OpenSocial community to the hundreds of millions of users in Outlook is exciting and look forward to seeing what a more open Outlook future brings.

We’re hosting an event at our offices in San Francisco, CA the day before Google I/O open to all developers interested in hacking and exploring how to work their product or services into Outlook in a meaningful way. The event/hack is May 9 from 2:00 – 6:00pm. Some developers will be offered the opportunity to present their hack to the guests, including judges Michael Arrington/TechCrunch, Joseph Smarr/Google and David Lee/SV Angel. Space is limited. RSVP here.

Developers unable to attend, but interested about learning more about creating Xobni Gadgets can visit http://www.xobni.com/developer/.

Posted on behalf of Xobni, by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundaiton