People

The OpenSocial specification defines the Person object to store information specific to a user. Part of this information is stored in the user's profile (such as hobbies and contact information). The other important user information is the set of connections with other users in the social graph and this is tracked as relationships.

The user ID must be alphanumeric (A-Za-z0-9) and must uniquely identify the user in a container. This standardization is intended to allow for prefixing user IDs with a domain name and separator to create globally unique IDs. Refer to Authentication Delegationfor more information on how the SocialSite software extends the OpenSocial specification to provide unique user identities.

There are two Person objects that can be requested directly from an OpenSocial container: the VIEWER and the OWNER. The VIEWER accesses the user profile of another user (who would the OWNER). Likewise, a user can act as both VIEWER and OWNER when the user's own profile is updated.

The standard OpenSocial specifications do not support creating and updating user profile data. Likewise, the standard OpenSocial specifications do not give you any control over who can see which parts of your profile or activities. The SocialSite software provides extensions to manage user profiles (User Profile Data Extensions) and limit access to user profiles (Profile Privacy Settings Extensions).