« Previous post
Next post »

March 25, 2008

As Predicted, Yahoo Joins OpenSocial. But Wait, There’s More

Michael Arrington

24 comments »

opensocial-logo-2.pngTwo 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.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 7:41 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. ricdes dot com

    March 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am

  2. ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA « Daily Marauder

    March 25th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

  3. Yahoo Joins OpenSocial. But Wait, There’s More « From Ronald Alversado’s Desk | Weblogs

    March 25th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

  4. VisualBlog - das VisualOrgasm-Weblog

    March 26th, 2008 at 3:52 am

  5. Yahoo, Google та Myspace створюють OpenSocial Foundation | Український IT-блог

    March 26th, 2008 at 10:02 am

  6. Информационный блог VideoShot.ru » Архив блога » Yahoo! присоединился к OpenSocial

    March 30th, 2008 at 2:00 am

  7. The New Yahoo: Sticky, Viral, And Most Of All, Friendly

    April 24th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  8. Yahoo Open Strategy Announcement | Webnologist | Cosmin Ghiu

    April 25th, 2008 at 6:41 am

  9.  — Instant Web Meetings.COM - Video Conference, Collaboration, E Learning, Unified Communications

    April 27th, 2008 at 1:05 am

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Matt

    March 25th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    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. ;)

  2. Aaron B. Hockley

    March 25th, 2008 at 7:55 am

    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.

  3. Aaron

    March 25th, 2008 at 7:57 am

    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)

  4. Marcus

    March 25th, 2008 at 7:58 am

    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

  5. Paul Walsh

    March 25th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    @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.

  6. Chris Heuer

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    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…

  7. Edoardo Piccolotto

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    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

  8. Face of the Day

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Wow looks nice.I’m Ready for it so are my models!!!

    http://faceoftheday.blogspot.com

  9. JD

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    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

  10. Jason M

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:34 am

    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.

  11. david

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:48 am

    Very funny

  12. YDrive

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Yahoo! — impressively :-O

  13. SoftwareSweatshop

    March 25th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Nice, let’s see what happens…

    Raza Imam
    http://SoftwareSweatshop.com

  14. Daniel Feygin

    March 25th, 2008 at 10:42 am

    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.

  15. Web Design by Jacques Snyman

    March 25th, 2008 at 10:02 pm

    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.

« Previous post
Next post »