Portable Contacts and OpenSocial

[Brian Ellin]

The other day someone asked me "What's the difference between Portable
Contacts and the OpenSocial REST API?" To which, I responded "I think
they are wire format compatabile." Appendix B of the draft spec [1]
states this clearly. He then asked why both projects are doing the
same thing and evolving in parallel, and why PoCo isn't just a stand
alone project within OpenSocial. I didn't have a great answer for
that one, but mentioned that the PoCo project is smaller in scope, and
may be more approachable to developers of services which aren't
primarily social in nature and do not desire to become OpenSocial
containers. PoCo also contains discovery bits which aren't a part of
OpenSocial, i think.

Is that right? It got me thinking that from a marketing perspective
it may be useful to more closely align, or further differentiate the
projects to avoid confusion. I see services asking the question: will
my API be "Portable Contacts" or "OpenSocial" compatible, and which
will be clearer to my developer community? I'm also interested in
which path will make the "Open Stack" easier to understand for people
just getting started.

Cheers,
Brian Ellin

[1] http://portablecontacts.net/draft-spec.html#anchor19

[Joseph Smarr]

The goal of wire-aligning our specs but keeping them independent was to "have our cake and eat it too"--if you're already supporting the OpenSocial RESTful protocols, you become a Portable Contacts provider "for free", but if you just want to do Portable Contacts and you're not in the "OpenSocial camp" for one reason or another, you can do that too. I think it does also provide clarity about the scope and focus of Portable Contacts, which as you mention spans both address books and social networks, and is narrowly focused on the problem of easy and standard access to that people data.

 

I agree that it requires a bit of explaining to avoid confusion, and it's not quite as clean as "OpenSocial also uses OAuth and XRD, but those are separate building blocks too", since the Portable Contacts piece is actually part of the API spec too, but that's the spirit, and hopefully when we expand our "marketing effort" early next year (as the previous thread has suggested we do), we can make sure to address this point as well.

 

Thanks for the feedback! js

[chris....@gmail.com]

Perhaps if we had a substantial, non-OpenSocial implementation
(besides Plaxo) to make that case (i.e. Apple!), it's be more
convincing that PoCo has, and deserves, an identity and a life outside
of OS.

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Citizen-Participant &
Open Technology Advocate-at-Large
factoryjoe.com # diso-project.org
citizenagency.com # vidoop.com
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