Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Social Web Technologies and Open Development

With the recent announcement of MySpace's extended Developer Platform, its easy to see how open development has become one of the great cars pulling the train that is Web 2.0. The push for open development and open standards is so prominent that we are seeing giants like IBM, with its support for Open Office, and Google, with the addition of Star Office, pumping millions into investing in Open.

With the advent of simpler API's and developer platforms, these tools factor heavily into the success of common Web 2.0 companies who would otherwise go unused. What good is Flikr if you can't integrate it into our blog? How must more popular are digg stories that can be dugg directly after reading an article? Tools like these are crucial in fully embracing the social aspect of Web 2.0. Even Microsoft is starting to grasp the concept with Office Live attempting to find its mark on the internet. But even as Microsoft has the technologies down, they still don't embrace the social.

As the web becomes more interactive, I predict we will continue to see easier to use API's coming from both start-ups and big companies alike.

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