First thoughts on OpenSocial

Standards are good. Open standards are best. OpenSocial looks like an open standard. After studying them for five years, I feel like I can recognize one.

While developers feverishly download and play with the new OpenSocial APIs, here's my most fervent hope for OpenSocial. Advertisers want to fund Web sites so they can target us with ever-more-personalized advertising. What hardly anyone ever talks about is a way for customers to opt out of advertising entirely, yet enjoy the open standards and technology being built on the Web today.

Maybe when all the dust settles, OpenSocial and standards like it will enable subscription-based Web services that are both interoperable and as private as we want, up to and including shielded from the prying eyes of advertisers. That would enable another whole new generation of services, since I am certain that many customers are less than eager to hand over some of their most private personal and corporate information and habits, just to easily share some contacts, calendars or photos.