Two weeks ago there were reports that Yahoo was planning to join Google’s OpenSocial application platform. A day later we heard that the final decision had been made, but it wouldn’t be announced for a while, probably in April.
Well, they beat that projection by a week. Today Yahoo announced their support for the platform. But they are also, along with Google and MySpace, forming a new non-profit organization called the OpenSocial Foundation. It is modeled after the OpenID Foundation. The goal, they say, is that by placing the assets into a new non-profit, they’ll be able to say they will maintain absolute neutrality while keeping a straight face.
Developers and website owners are also being pointed to the OpenSocial Foundation website for current specifications and links to other resources.
Engineers from all three founding entities will work on the project, they say. All specifications are available under a creative commons copyright license. Also an open source reference implementation called Shindig is being created and developed as a project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator.
The press release for this is here. We will also be on a briefing call later this morning with our live notes.
That’s cool…. web developers are loving all this btw.
This is the icing on the Microformat cake Yahoo gave us not long ago. Yahoo is doing a great job of making the Microsoft issue less of a headline… giving outlets more to talk about. 
This all sounds great in theory, but I’m becoming more and more skeptical of these “big companies jump on the latest open bandwagon” announcements. As you noted recently, the big players have done a lot of talking about OpenID, but have yet to offer real value for the end user, where I can sign up for Yahoo services using a Google OpenID, or vice versa.
So if they turn it into a nonprofit, it’ll take years to gain any momentum and then the implementation won’t be standard across the sites that are supposed to be using it. Yawn? (See: OpenID, WC3, Joel Spolsky’s latest article on internet standards)
I agree with Aaron - where’s the real value for me the developer - or the end users? Is this to make our life easier, or for them to look good in pixels?
marcus
http://UserVoice.com
@Michael companies like Google running ‘non-profit’ organisations is as much bullshit as the likes of GSMA, Nokia, Google and others owning .mobi as a ‘non-profit’.
Google is not ‘do no evil’ that most suggest. They’re ‘Microsoft 2000′.
Look at the Mozilla/Google relationship. Mozilla is a ‘non-profit’ (and an org I admittedly love), yet a lot of its revenue comes from… Google. They’re totally in bed.
So, it appears that Google like to invest in non-profit organisations which all help their market share in the long run.
I am really very excited to hear this is headed in the right direction. These are the sorts of things I knew Kevin Marks et al would do if given the chance, and it looks like management has done that. This is exactly the sort of standards effort we want to get all Social Media Club members to support. There’s definitely more to be done with the proposal and we look forward to contributing and supporting it going forward…
I believe that personal information has to be kept personal, no matter how big is the one that stores it. And I have to say that o matter which allegiances people are making… A way can be found in this doc http://www.web2bm.com
Wow looks nice.I’m Ready for it so are my models!!!
http://faceoftheday.blogspot.com
Hey mike, here’s sth you might find worth covering.
Online Ad Spend Expectations Reduced by $1.6B
http://www.marketingvox.com/em.....e=textlink
The crunch is coming
It is about time. I love the contradiction of companies claiming to support the move toward open, social and community-based technologies, yet they try to get there by keeping their wares “closed.” Maybe the needs and the requirements of users will finally win out. Philanthropic or not, Google has helped fuel some very worthwhile initiatives.
Very funny
Yahoo! — impressively :-O
Nice, let’s see what happens…
Raza Imam
http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
The point is not that “they’ll be able to say they will maintain absolute neutrality while keeping a straight face”, but that a legal structure is created which takes power away from Google, ensuring it will not be used against its competitors (namely Yahoo!).
Prior to this the governance around OpenSocial was entirely in the hands of Google. Every implementer of the spec was subject to Google’s unilateral terms.
Hahahahahah…..absolute neutrality…..trust me these guys got greater things in mind, they’re hoping that with all their resources behind this endeavour it will become the biggest social media platform, ever. With Facebook running at 67 million plus users, and mobile search being the way forward, they’ll be looking at serious integration and tapping this market. No free lunches with these guys, no matter what they’re preaching.