Amid rumblings of an upcoming announcement that FaceBook will open up its application platform shortly, Google goes one better, with a platform that appears to solve the reusability problem, by offerring a platform that will provide applications to work anywhere.

This is appealing, not just for marketers to simplify leverage of their applications, using build one use everywhere (except FaceBook), but more importantly, people can continue with their application preferences across networks, or as they switch networks.  Anything that places that power back in the hands of people is a good thing.  Anything that treats the entire web as a platform is definitely a good thing. 

Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday

Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language (Facebook requires use of FBML for security reasons, but it also makes code unusable outside of Facebook). Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements).

The benefit of the Google approach is that developers can use much of their existing front end code and simply tailor it slightly for OpenSocial, so creating applications is even easier than on Facebook.

Relevance to Bankwatch:
As marketers experiment, test and learn, its worthwhile to take the time to consider alternatives, and ensure alignment of costs with the right audience, and implications for future application enhancements.

Technorati Tags: OpenSocial, Google, FaceBook, Orkut