The OpenSocial Foundation Spreads Goodness to the Social Web Worldwide

Caroline McCarthy has posted the details of a new foundation that has been set up to “support the OpenSocial initiative that Google kick-started last year as a way to promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites.” The purpose of the new organization is to spread the concept that OpenSocial is not being managed by Google but is instead being supported by the community.

My biggest problem with the standard so far has been that it’s not easy! There are multiple standards that must be supported to launch your application on MySpace and other social networks so far. It appears that this new foundation will focus on bringing together the community to help further the OpenSocial standard. A statement from Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management, said “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open.”

The new foundation has the support of both Yahoo, Google and MySpace. This comes on the heels of the data portability news from Microsoft earlier this morning. Looks like the Google P.R. engine is in full swing. While I’m not sure about the significance of this news as it pertains to the future of the social web, this new foundation is paving the way for OpenSocial to become the social web standard as opposed to the licensing of the Facebook platform to other websites.

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