MySpace, Yahoo! and Google give OpenSocial a big boost

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 26 March 2008 01:33

Your IT - Home IT

MySpace and Yahoo! have backed Google's OpenSocial set of APIs for social networking: together with Google they will form the OpenSocial Foundation to facilitate the development of social networking applications that will work across multiple web sites.

The say the move will "ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web."

OpenSocial was announced by Google in November 2007 and billed as a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web - for developers of social applications and for websites that want to add social features. Google claimed that "OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use. The release of OpenSocial marks the first time that multiple social networks have been made accessible under a common API to make development and distribution easier and more efficient for developers."

Shortly after its launch, analysts at Ovum suggested it could greatly undermine Facebook's dominance of social networking because Facebook requires third party application developers to adhere to its proprietary interface