The moment Facebook announced its deal with MSN it threw down the gauntlet directly at Google’s feet and the latter were not slow at picking it up.

OpenSocial is nothing less than Google’s attempt to have a stake in the next web standard and to accomplish this it has hedged its bets and kept MySpace out of OpenSocial.

You will ask, right now, what does the OpenSocial movement mean to webmasters focused on search engine optimising their website and you’d be right. The reason you spend so much time on SEO and SEO-related work is precisely because you want your site to rank high, attract relevant traffic and be successful. Online social communities are eminently marketable as Facebook and LinkedIn have shown and OpenSocial, by bringing together so many social networks, provides the opportunity for some clever viral marketing which you would not normally get anywhere else.

The trick to making the most of this depends very much on a little ‘Blue Sky thinking’ of your own. Decide what kind of message you would respond to if you were a member of the network. Then join up, create a profile and start working to publicise your website.

It really is that simple.