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opensocial
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friend connect
opensocial
Yahoo, Google, MySpace form tax-exempt foundation to promote Facebook rival
Yahoo, Google and MySpace plan to further compound their OpenSocial initiative with another initiative, the OpenSocial Foundation. OpenSocial is a widget platform Google first announced last fall when Facebook seemed poised to "take over the world" with its own platform. After the announcement, Google rushed OpenSocial into development and completed — sort of — a beta version earlier this year. The foundation proposal calls for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status and protection against patent challenges. Ah, so this is really about getting donors to pay Google's legal bills!
yahoo
Yahoo joins Google's OpenSocial, four months after everyone else
OpenSocial: it's Google's widget platform for MySpace and a bunch of social networks you've never of — and now Yahoo's. Bits reports that Yahoo will join the OpenSocial platform sometime in the next week. Don't overthink the message here, people. It's "Hey Microsoft, you sure we're worth all that money?"
google sites
Why is Google trying to imitate Microsoft's lamest product?
Google relaunched JotSpot, a group wiki it acquired in 2006, as Google Sites today. It's a collaborative wiki. Whatever. For a PR-friendly feature list, go check out Google PR. What we want to know is: What took so long? And why did Google bother? More »
rumormonger
Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo to Google?
Microsoft's bid for Yahoo has many eyeing the exits. But we hear that Bradley Horowitz, the VP in charge of Yahoo's advanced products group, has been plotting his escape long before Steve Ballmer's bear hug made it trendy. Since late last year, he's been interviewing at Google. It's not clear if he'll actually get the job, though. Google's hiring process is legendarily slow, but Larry and Sergey can get things moving on candidates they're keen on. If Horowitz was really wanted at the Googleplex, wouldn't he be working there by now? Or was Google just waiting to oust Chris Sacca, making room for another voluble professional conference attendee? Update: Bradley, we misunderestimated you. TechCrunch reports Horowitz is working on one of Google's most vaporous projects: its OpenSocial widget platform, alongside Excite founder Joe Kraus.
deals
Google to buy Plaxo -- and a new pal -- for $200 million?
Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship. One could bloviate endlessly here about industry consolidation, user-data portability, and so on — and I'm sure you'll read plenty of that. I think the real reason is much simpler. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder now leading Google's social-network strategy, wants to work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect. I sat with the two at lunch at the Web 2.0 Summit last year, and they got along famously. More »
acquisitions
Plaxo for sale
The New York Times reports that address-book service Plaxo is seeking up to $100 million from buyers. Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin writes, "Plaxo, which has been overtaken by rivals like LinkedIn and Facebook, has tried to reinvent itself as an aggregate of information from other social networking sites," joining Google's OpenSocial initiative in November. That spiked usage among customers. Selling now may be not desperation, but timeliness.
joe kraus
OpenSocial is real, swears Googler in charge
OpenSocial, which we've always maintained is a surprisingly elegant PR scam, isn't due out until next year. Facebook continues to add 100 (still entirely useless) apps a day to its now purportedly open platform. So is there any point to Google's OpenSocial anymore? Sure there is. Just ask the guy whose career at Google depends on it. More »
developer relations
Facebook throws platform at rivals, pokes Google
Facebook wasn't invited to the OpenSocial party. Now it's throwing its own. Facebook says it will allow other social networks to use the software behind its third-party developer platform as a model. "In fact, we'll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms," Ami Vora writes on its Facebook Developers blog. The big loser? Well, anyone who writes apps for social networks, pretty much by definition. But also, Google. More »
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