And the first set of APIs is going to become official tomorrow for the developing community, the user has to wait for implementations to show up.
According to Tech Crunch:
"Google will announce its new social networking initiative, Open Social on Thursday. Other partners are as XING, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Newsgator, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, a.o.
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at any social networks (called 'hosts':
* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)"
more
Update:
Google Launches OpenSocial to Spread Social Applications Across the Web
John Battelle has the release from tomorrow, today
The following links are due to go live:
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial (technical docs)
http://sandbox.orkut.com/ (sandbox to test apps)
via Barry Graubart on Social Networks
Narrated Screencast from the Ning folks
(via Mark Hopkins on mashable)
