Project SocialSite was announced at JavaOne back in May (presentation) and code was released earlier this month. Installing this social computing enabler is quite simple when following the install guide (even if you can be a little disturbed by the SSO feature enabled by default). If you'd like to follow the progress of this project, the SocialSite Group Blog is probably the one place to look at.

One of the key technology used in SocialSite is Shindig, a reference implementation for the Google-initiated OpenSocial API (now up to v0.8). This API has strong backup from all the major social networks (LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Ning, SalesForce.com, Hi5, and more) except for Facebook as of this writing. The value proposition of such a widely adopted API is that of writing an application one and deploying in on multiple social containers (sounds familiar? :-). The theory is that you can reach half a Billion users with a single OpenSocial Gadget.

Dave Johnson, creator of the the Roller blogging engine and lead for SocialSite promises more demos and code to understand the value of SocialSite as an addition to existing infrastructure such as Roller. I believe Social computing has great potential in the enterprise to create more value from better qualified interactions and connections between employees.