A Generic Social Networking API for Web Development?

Some developers have wondered if a generic API that could be used to allow Web apps to interact with social networking websites would be a useful tool. Since each social network uses its own guidelines for deciding how its data is structured, and how its own API functions, a generic API could be extremely useful if it allowed interaction with practically any social network.

If an API could be created that finds and uses the features that are common to most social networks, while using new generic formats to interact with common data, resources and features, such an API could be very useful indeed. Naturally it would be limited to GET requests only, and a limited set of social networks would initially be accessible via the API.

There would be a lot of work involved in the creation of such a social networking API, and various hurdles would have to be crossed, but such a tool could simplify the process of accessing data from social networks, making the idea of a social network mashup a bit close to reality.

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