Yahoo! Joins the OpenSocial Movement, So What Does it All Mean?

MoreVisibility - March 26, 2008

The OpenSocial Movement, which started out as the anti-Facebook coalition, has been in place for some time now. Its purpose is to create open standards in order to share user information across different applications. Google started this movement last year with MySpace jumping aboard in November.

Now some may say, just to steer even further from the lingering MSN take-over talks, Yahoo! has announced their plans to join the movement! Of course Yahoo! has been in the social media market for awhile, but in all fairness, their sites (e.g. Buzz) have lacked support from their internal technical teams.

In addition to the movement, Yahoo, Google and MySpace have teamed up to create the non-profit organization OpenSocial Foundation, which according to Financial Times, aims to “create their own networks as users are able to communicate, share interests and play with one another across the different social networks.”

So what does all this mean for Yahoo!’s existence and will Facebook continue to run on their own? Only time will tell, I guess, but the movement is stirring up many changes in the overall atmosphere on the Internet today, with a possibility of a very controversial 2008!