Yahoo Joins OpenSocial, New Team Creates OpenSocial Foundation

Yahoo has announced this morning that they have joined the OpenSocial Movement, created and run by Google. I don’t get it - Yahoo was just starting to appear to have some legs as they are fighting the Microsoft takeover and yet they throw in the cards and join Google? Here is our simple OpenSocial overview.

The new crew has also announced plans to create the OpenSocial Foundation. From Yahoo, "The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction."

Caroline McCarthy at CNET was able to grab a quote from Facebook. Facebook is not part of OpenSocial as they created their own developer platform last year.

"As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation," a statement from the company read. "The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience."

There is a call scheduled at 1pm today to discuss the announcement and as (almost) always, we will cover the call live. Be here at 1pm Eastern for the goodies.