When developing applications on a social platform (or container) such as MySpace or the Yahoo! Application Platform, many developers treat the creation of their applications as if it were the Wild West, with no programming rules or best practices. Building on top of a black box environment is not always easy, but just because a container allows you to do something with your application doesn't mean that you should. OpenSocial is a set of standardized methods to access social data from a container (among other things), providing structure to this cross-container development experience and introducing new concepts in professional social application development.