Hi Abe,

You can think of OpenSocial in a couple different ways:

By creating an XML gadget and using the JavaScript APIs, you can put your site's functionality inside of social networks like MySpace, hi5, orkut, and a lot more. Users visiting each network can use your application without leaving the network. This is currently launched on several sites.

The newest version of OpenSocial (0.8) created the RESTful API, which allows your site to talk to a social network of your choice (or possibly multiple networks) on behalf of a visiting user. Users visiting your site will be asked to log into the network, and you'll get back a user ID number that you can use to uniquely identify the user on your own site. This way, you won't have to bother writing complicated user registration or profile management code. Many sites are working on implementing this API, but I don't know of any that have gone live yet (hopefully this will come soon!)

Hope this helps, ~Arne

On Jul 25, 2:58 pm, Abe <avi....@gmail.com> wrote: