New iGoogle gadgets - a potential social strategy tool?

iGoogle is a personalised Google page for your account where you can add 'gadgets' for news, weather, rss feeds and more, helping you to create your own web experience and easily view your regular haunts. This week Google have announced that the Open Social API is now available to US and Australian users, with more countries to follow.

The OpenSocial API allows a gadget to be created for any purpose, and potentially shared with your iGoogle contacts. This means that you will be able to interact with your friends directly through the gadgets on your iGoogle page. For example, you can currently install gadgets to get help with (or solve together!) the NY Times crossword or challenge a contact to a game of scrabble (sharing is done through contact lists so there is no stranger interaction).

There are a small number of social gadgets that have already been created , and we have started thinking of ideas for new ones that we can work on when the API is released to the UK. Essentially, the success of the Social Gadgets is going to depend upon the quality of the gadgets and how useful they become to iGoogle users and their contacts when staying in touch online.

At the moment the iGoogle Developer is still in formative stages, and so is part of Google Code labs.

This blog post was written by Sarah

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