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"The official news is out on the MySpace and Google deal, first rumored earlier today.  The big news: the two companies have actually been working together on OpenSocial all along, which launches officially tonight.  From the jointly issued news release: \n\"MySpace, the world\u2019s largest social network, and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial\u2014 a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today\u2019s announcement underscores MySpace\u2019s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.\"\nOther \"founding partners\" of the project include: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.  So much for OpenSocial only having the \"b-list\" of social networks as the original reports indicated.  In addition to #1 ranking MySpace, partner Six Apart owns Typepad, LiveJournal, MovableType, and Vox, while new addition Imeem has also become a rising star.  Here's a chart from Hitwise summarizing the combined OpenSocial players versus Facebook in terms of overall traffic market share:\n\nWhile MySpace has been widely criticized in recent months for falling behind Facebook and its much-hyped platform, it looks like the sleeping giant has had something up their sleeve all along.  With Google and MySpace leading the OpenSocial initiative, and apparently most all of the other major social networks on board, MySpace is right back in the social networking driver's seat.\nThe next big obvious questions is: Will Facebook join OpenSocial, or is it going to become Facebook/Microsoft versus Google/MySpace?  With more than 40 million users and a somewhat established platform, Facebook will continue to be attractive for developers, but with all of the big players joining Google/MySpace for OpenSocial, staying out might be a big mistake.\nCoverage Recap:\nHere's a roundup of some additional coverage we've had here on Mashable leading up to this huge announcement:\nNing screencast: Provides you with an idea of how social network creator Ning built their app for OpenSocial.\nNewsGator Joins OpenSocial: The company is providing multimedia tools that will be available to all users of Google's partner sites.\nFotoFlexer Interview: Mark interviewed some executives from FotoFlexer about how the company will be leveraging the OpenSocial platform.\nPoll: Which social network do you hope dies a slow and painful death?  As of yesterday, the vast majority said MySpace!\nGoogle Shares Pass $700: Investors are apparently pretty enthusiastic about the company's plans to move beyond search.\nAdditionally, Steve Polland has posted JavaScript code for Flixter's MySpace app, for the curious that don't want to wait around a few more hours.\nStay tuned for an interview with another one of the major players in the OpenSocial initiative that we'll be posting here later this afternoon.\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2007/11/01/myspace-google-2/>