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Yahoo to join open program alliance's nonprofit venture

Yahoo said on Tuesday that it would join an alliance to be led by Google, its principal rival, that will try to make it easier for programmers to write software that can run on the pages of many social networks and other Web sites.

Google announced on Tuesday that it would give up control of the alliance and turn it over to a nonprofit foundation. Google, Yahoo and MySpace, another member of the group, will be among founding members of the group, the OpenSocial Foundation.

Yahoo's inclusion broadens the potential reach of the foundation. The group is working on standards that will let developers create programs that can run on any social network or Web site that embraces them. Such programs might, for example, allow users to let friends know the music or movies they enjoy.

The creation of the OpenSocial alliance last fall was widely seen as a response by Google and others to the growing power of Facebook, which has persuaded thousands of outside developers to build applications for its site. Those applications have helped bolster Facebook's popularity.

A Facebook spokeswoman, Brandee Barker, said it would not be part of OpenSocial.

"Facebook is not joining this foundation, but the company remains focused on advancing Facebook Platform to benefit the developer community and help users communicate and share information more efficiently," Barker said.

Yahoo gave no details on when or how it would adopt the OpenSocial standards. Only MySpace and Orkut, Google's social network, have used OpenSocial.
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