Today Google released OpenSocial to the public, it is to be a way to build social applications that work on multiple platforms such as Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING (no facebook yet though).  To the average user this means very little, but to a developer this is big.

I have been working on it, and while there is a lot yet to be desired, and a lot of bugs, Google does like to release often. I expect this to grow immensely.