The case for OpenSocial

I have said on numerous occasions - whether you love or loathe the Scobleizer, Robert Scoble always manages to move the conversation along. The Scobleizer has done it again. On Twitter he is following over 20,000 people. Yes! 20,000! In his latest blog Scoble talks about Twitter and inadequacy and the great friends divide. In the post he makes the case that the value of the Social application is made or broken by the volume and quality of your friends. He cites numerous social applications as examples. Unwittingly, or may be deviously, he has made the case for OpenSocial and the ability to move our friends lists between social applications. This ability needs to be at a granular level. We need to be able to define and move/copy groups of "Friends" and colleagues. If you are building a social application you absolutely need to support initiatives like OpenSocial so that members can rapidly amplify the value that they can derive from your application. I have to agree with Scoble when it comes to Twitter. The value comes from being able to tap in to the flow of conversation. You get more value from the flow than from treating Twitter as your soapbox. Robert, thanks for pushing the conversation along. And yes, obviously I am one of the 20,000 people that follow The Scobleizer on Twitter with my ekivemark twitter account. He's right it does make me smarter and more informed.