Is it possible to search people using OpenSocial?

[Sarvar Abdullaev]

Hi!

I learned that OpenSocial provides single standard API to major social
networks. So it means that it is possible to search people using
OpenSocial and find the profiles of them. If it is possible, how can I
implement such application which would find the list of social sites
were searched person is registered. It should be quite obvious and
easy task to do.

Thank you.

[Chris Chabot]

Hi Sarvar,

The 'Open' in OpenSocial refers to the standard being open, everyone is able to join and use it, and there's an open process in which people can participate and help form the specification.

The 'Open' doesn't however refer to people's private data, that is a policy that the social site's decide for them selves; And most (think: 99%) of them don't publish all social data of their members, so building a data mining app that goes of and finds profiles on all the social networks, that's something you can't make with it.

What you could make is an app in which the user is prompted to give permission to your app to read his profile and friend data (authentication through OAuth, and fetching the social information via the social REST API's), but the user would have to give permission per social site, and this would only work for the social sites that expose their REST API's

There's a number of libraries that make this easier for you: http://blog.opensocial.org/2008/12/opensocial-now-friends-with-php-java.html

Goodluck,

   -- Chris

[Sarvar Abdullaev]

Hi Chris!

Thank you for your thorough answer.

I know that the profile of some user might be private and cannot be
easily grabbed in such way. But all I want to do with OpenSocial is to
check whether the user is registered in particular social network or
not.
Does OpenSocial provide this kind of feature? Anyway in Facebook it is
possible to search people using FQL. OpenSocial said to be more open
than Facebook. I am not going to access someone's profile, I just need
to know if some users is affiliated with particular social network.

Thank you.

On Jun 19, 2:37 pm, Chris Chabot <chab...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Sarvar,
>
> The 'Open' in OpenSocial refers to the standard being open, everyone is able
> to join and use it, and there's an open process in which people can
> participate and help form the specification.
>
> The 'Open' doesn't however refer to people's private data, that is a policy
> that the social site's decide for them selves; And most (think: 99%) of them
> don't publish all social data of their members, so building a data mining
> app that goes of and finds profiles on all the social networks, that's
> something you can't make with it.
>
> What you could make is an app in which the user is prompted to give
> permission to your app to read his profile and friend data (authentication
> through OAuth, and fetching the social information via the social REST
> API's), but the user would have to give permission per social site, and this
> would only work for the social sites that expose their REST API's
>

> There's a number of libraries that make this easier for you:http://blog.opensocial.org/2008/12/opensocial-now-friends-with-php-ja...

[Chris Chabot]

Hey Sarvar,

No there's no API for checking if someone is registered on a social network.

I'm not entirely going to bite on the FB vs OpenSocial comparison, however I would like to reiterate that the 'Open' in OpenSocial is about the legal aspects, the process in which it is developed (anyone can participate in forming the OpenSocial specification), the open source reference implementation (Apache Shindig) and the use of open standards (OpenID, OAuth, PortableContacts, etc) which allows everyone to use it on their own sites (becomming an 'opensocial container'), write apps for it (opensocial gadgets), build services around it (like Google FriendConnect) and help shape it's definition (the open spec process), and that it plays nice with- & uses all the open standards that make this web an exciting place to be!

It is however *not* about opening up private data to everyone; So the comparisment you make is not really applicable.

You could however change your application design and offer either a 'Connect through Google Friend Connect' (which supports google, yahoo, netlog, myspace, openid, etc etc as profile sources) or use OAuth and the OpenSocial REST API to build your own ("Connect through "Google", "Yahoo", "MySpace", "Netlog", "Hi5", etc), go through the OAuth authentication procedure, and then use the REST API to fetch their profile (and friend) information.

    -- Chris