Yahoo signs up to Google's OpenSocial

27 March 2008

Search engine Yahoo has signed up to its rival Google's OpenSocial standard for applications.

The search engines, along with social networking site MySpace, have announced the formation of the OpenSocial Foundation – a not-for-profit group to promote and develop the standard.

OpenSocial is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers to create applications for social networking sites. In principle, an application developed using the APIs is compatible with any site that supports them, although there were reports of teething issues when the standard was launched in November 2007.

"OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning," said Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management. "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."

Facebook, which opened its Facebook Platform to application developers last year, has not signed up to OpenSocial.

Category: Google, Social media, Yahoo