OpenSocial Foundation Launches

Today the OpenSocial participants jointly announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation. The organization’s purpose it to keep OpenSocial as a separate entity which is independent of ownership by any individual group. The current participants are hi5, Google, Flixster, MySpace and Yahoo! Today’s announced came with the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation website which appears to be simply a source of information.

Just yesterday we announced that hi5 had launched OpenSocial version 0.8 which includes a set of REST APIs. One commenter posted that they had tried out the new version of OpenSocial on hi5 and had substantial technical issues. I also highlighted that OpenSocial still has some catching up to do to compete with Facebook as their platform has become the top choice for developers on the social web.

MySpace is currently catching up to Facebook making them the leading implementer of OpenSocial. OpenSocial has high hopes and according to many developers that have build on top of the standard, it has made it much easier for them to port their applications across platforms. What used to be a “coalition of the willing” has rapidly become a tightly knit group of social web leaders.

For more information check out the OpenSocial Foundation site. The site includes a FAQ, the organization’s Bylaws and a number of other resources. Also be sure to check out the MySpace developer post regarding this announcement.