Finally the word is out.
I have to say i am impressed by this approach.
Google is all set to release the Open Social API (OS API).
It not just an API for Orkut but it would work accross various social networking site.

These API would provide access to 3 datasets namely
* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

These API provide generic interfaces to access various datasets and functions.
For anything beyond these API would require to developer to use host specific API's
which would imply this application being non portable accross hosts.
In netshell this provides a virtual platform to build once and deploy your apps on a compliant host.

The various hosts that are the participating social networks, and in
clude Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.
Various social networking sites would act as containers and provide implementation for the OS API.

What it means for the developer is that they don't have to learn yet another markup language like FBML(for facebook). But the knowledge of just Html and JavaScript would be enough.
Mostly it would be Ajax invocations back and forth.

Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.