Yahoo! supports OpenSocial, joins Google and MySpace

Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google announced their agreement to form the OpenSocial Foundation, an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web. Thus the web giants` alliance will ensure the neutrality and longevity of the new Foundation as an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework.

 

According to the agreement, OpenSocial Foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction. Yahoo!'s support of OpenSocial and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide.

"Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users," said Wade Chambers, Vice President - Platforms, Yahoo!. "Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web."

About OpenSocial

OpenSocial addresses an emerging problem for developers who are eagerly building applications people can enjoy with their friends: before OpenSocial, if a developer built a "favorite photos" application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site. OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common "plumbing" that lets social applications run on many different websites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the websites.

The result is a vast distribution platform for social applications, whether they are for sharing photos or playing games or arranging real-world meetings or any number of other activities.

Related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008.