Live Conference Call Blogging: Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google on OpenSocial

This morning Yahoo, Google and MySpace announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation. There is a call scheduled for 1pm Eastern to discuss the news. Below are our live call notes – newest notes at the top. We will note once the call has concluded.

1:28 – call has completed.

1:24 – Marshall / ReadWriteWeb – any thoughts of splintering as each container is customizing? And can you give us an update on Microsoft’s relationship? David – one of the initial design goals was to include flexibility and to allow container appropriate tuning. We would welcome others to participate moving forward.

1:20 – Eric/Venture Beat – what is the progress of OS? Joe – topline figures – announced last fall, at the time it was specification 0.5, the community has come together and moved to 0.7 and this was launch-ready spec. So far two major container partners have launched: Orkut and MySpace and Hi5 is coming next tuesday. So the total reach is about 200 million users and the reach is substantial.  Don’t have any active numbers. Wade – open the spec via the foundation makes it safer for all involved.

1:18 – David/ARS Technica – There’s talk about monetization and protection of IP with CC, will there be any support that any IP rights? David – that’s something the foundation could look at and help provide an environment.  

1:15 – Erick from TC – Will there be any revenue opps to OpenSocial can you speak to how that revenue would be split? To what extent why these 3 companies, why weren’t the others included? Joe – the idea was to invite the entire community to create the foundation and the entire community will be involved in the process. What you have seen is MyS/Yah/Google enter into an IP arrangement. As for monetization, the OS protocols does not say anything regarding monetization. Each of the networks handling OS can decide with their developers how they will handle it.  Steve – any monies that come into the foundation, would help further the foundation’s objectives.

1:14 – Miguel Helt/NYT - Is the Foundation a response to yahoo believing that google would control too much of the IP? We’ve seen a lot of community support and it’s a community based effort and this takes it to the next step and Google has played a key role and is something we’d all like to see happen. 

1:13 – question time from the attendees 

1:10 – Steve Pierman, SVP of product strategy – MySpace has always been about openness and letting users do whatever they want to do. And OS is letting developers to do what they want to do including innovation and participate in a bigger community. We’re seeing that OS allows developers to continue to use HTML/JS knowledge to push into this new methodology. Our dev site has launched and we’ve let 2 companies in the first round and today thousands of developers are writing applications for MySpace and for OpenSocial containers. And these apps are becoming full features. Pimps Picnik.  We are very excited about OpenSocial and becomes the defacto standard for app development.

1:06 – Joe Krauss – Director Product Mgt - last quarter we announced OS – it provides a common API that can let developers run on other social networks – pimps iLike. Developers win because it lets them hit more customers with limited work. OpenSocial reaches over 200 million users today. If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. The strength of OS lies in the community. Yahoo/MyS/Google and the entire OpenSocial community are creating the Foundation. It will make sure OS is alway free and no one party has undue influence. Foundation setup in the next 90 days, and Y/MYS/G have agreed to a non-assertion patent covenants. It means that developers and container partners will remain free. In the spirit of openess, all documents can be found on the opensocial.org web site and it will become the main hub for everything related.

1:05 – Wade Chambers – VP Platforms – We will support the OS specification – this is in line with Yahoo’s supporting of open standards and platforms. We believe that common sets of tools are benefit to the developer community at large. We also believe this is yet another way to complement the set of tools we already provide.  We see OS as a rapidly supportive environment. We see a more social Web where Yahoo and others have the chance to play with users online. Today we will not speak about any specific usages on Yahoo.

1:03 – The man said the names very quickly but included are Wade Chambers, Yahoo - David Glazer/Joe Krauss – Google and a MySpace rep 

1:00 – still on hold – why can’t these calls ever start on time? :)