So I admit it, i'm addicted to Facebook, i'm sure i'm not the only one. I have way too many profiles across a lot of sites, friendster, linkedin, even ratemyface.com . All of those sites have a social network component, but all of them are different. Google announced on November 1st a new common API called "Open Social". This would allow a common API to run across social network sites to interface information between them and business applications. Google outlined a few key pieces of information in their announcement video that people want to know:

People

Friends

Activities

All of these are key pieces of information that you would want to know about your Salesforce contacts in the nonprofit world. By exposing this type of interface through social networking sites it allows yet another level of data richness.  I liked the linkedin demo that they showed in the video about knowing what people you know or are related too.

So now onto the most exciting part! At minute 43 of the youtube video Jason Masciarelli, CEO of Theikos and Adam Gross of Salesforce.com. Theikos is a Salesforce.com partner and has a long history of implementing Salesforce for Nonprofits (as a disclosure I used to work there prior to joining Salesforce.com). I really like how they are demoing showing the relationship between people that other contacts know. You can show how a volunteer, for example, might have a relationship to one of your major donors via an application like the one demonstrated.  I talked with Jason today about it, and Theikos is pretty excited about being involved. He said in the next few weeks once Winter 07 is released that they will be announcing an appexchange widget around Open Social which should be exciting for our nonprofit community. I look forward to seeing more!

Chris Atwood, Nonprofits and Education, Salesforce.com

ps. Check out Adam's blog entry here.