26 March 2008

Google's plan to open social networks gets Yahoo!'s support

Yahoo! has revealed that it is backing a program being developed by rival search engine provider Google to make software more easily accessible across different social networking sites.

The two firms, along with MySpace, have agreed to form the OpenSocial Foundation as a means of achieving this goal.

According to a Yahoo! statement, the foundation will "ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web".

Released by Google in November 2007, OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social networking applications.

Applications which implement the OpenSocial APIs will have interoperability with any social networking system that supports them.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be a not-for-profit, independent organisation and is intended as a means of providing transparency and operational guidelines related to the development of the OpenSocial platform.

Commenting on the development, Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms at Yahoo!, stated: "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."
Meanwhile, Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, added: "OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning.

"The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open."

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