Search engine rivals come together for networking programme

Yahoo has become the latest company to join the OpenSocial programme.

The company announced on Tuesday that it will join the group, founded by long-time rival Google, by adding support for the OpenSocial API development tool.

OpenSocial APIs allow developers to create a single web-based application that can work on any number of social networking sites.

A single application could be created which uses data from any site or adds a new function between several services.

"Yahoo believes in community-driven industry specifications and expects OpenSocial to fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users," said Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms at Yahoo.

"Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web."

Yahoo also announced that it will partner with Google and MySpace to form a non-profit group dedicated to the technical and legal aspects of OpenSocial.

OpenSocial.org will develop frameworks for handling intellectual property and governance issues, and establish guidelines for documentation and technical issues.

Google was quick to welcome Yahoo into the OpenSocial fold, which now includes LinkedIn, MySpace, Friendster and Salesforce.com.

"We are looking forward to Yahoo users joining the hundreds of millions of people who will soon enjoy OpenSocial applications," said Google product manager, Dan Peterson.

"This addition means even more distribution for developers, encourages participation by even more websites and, most importantly, results in more features for users all across the web."