Open Social is the "Hero" of today, according to the rave reviews it has been receiving . There are of course many "malcontents" such as Tim willing to raise questions about this. Well, I have some questions myself.
The first thing that really struck me with Open Social was that it seemed geared to creating portable apps with a standard language such as JavaScript and a framework to support this. The social network side just appears to be a spring board for adoption.
What makes me think that is a framework play? Check out the Persistence Data API.
The strategy of building an open framework and then piggy backing on social networks was something that we were planning with Zimki - maybe I'm reading too much into this?
However my curiousity was also aroused by the the list of who is involved - LinkedIn, Oracle, Salesforce.com etc. This is quite a business orientated crowd, and whilst Salesforce is already a well known SaaS player, Oracle is just moving into this space.
Though this move by Google is good for the industry and probably necessary for them, there seems to be much more to Open Social than just portable social networks apps.
Is this going to turn out to be the NBE that Yegge hinted at?