Marissa Mayer has announced few weeks ago the launch of iGoogle social. iGoogle social, it’s firstly a range of gadgets which let us interconnect to anyone to play together, share, challenge friends, etc … Then, iGoogle Social is an API for developers to create their own social gadgets.
In social networks like FaceBook, applications are embedded in the service itself and are not usable outside the service to keep users in the environment. With iGoogle social gadgets, it’s the future possibility of taking the gadgets in any other environment, because Google gadgets are made to be reusable thanks, in particular, to the OpenSocial standard launched two years ago.
So, it’s the opposite of the strategy of FaceBook that Google sets up, the ability to disseminate massively social functions in (pervasive in English) other web services 🙂
Google is faithful to his way of growing.
It is also one more step taken by the realtime web: permanent and real-time interconnection of Internet users through its services.