Yahoo along with MySpace and Google would be forming a OpenSocial Foundation to ensure neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial being a community-governed specification for building social applications on the internet. OpenSocial Foundation would be an independent non-profit entity.
OpenSocial would be handed over to the new organization by July 1. Yahoo! Inc Vice President for Platforms, Wade Chambers mentioned, “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,” and also stated “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”
MySpace, Yahoo and Google would work along with the OpenSocial community on several core elements of OpenSocial and the foundation website would be the portal for the community to get updated on all the information, downloads, links and resources.
OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. Built from standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps with OpenSocial that access a social network’s friends and update feeds. By using a common API, developers can extend the reach of their applications more quickly, yielding more functionality for users.