Belatedly recognizing the importance of social networking as an online service and advertising vehicle, Google Inc. this week will unleash its strongest response yet to the rising threat and skyrocketing popularity of MySpace and Facebook.
On Thursday, Google will announce OpenSocial, an initiative with a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) at its core that is designed "to spread social applications across the Web," the company said.
These common APIs have been designed to let developers create social networking applications that will run on multiple Web sites, simplifying the making and distribution of these programs.
Partners supporting OpenSocial include various well-known software developers and social networking sites: Oracle, Salesforce.com, Hi5, iLike, LinkedIn, Slide, Ning, Friendster and Plaxo. Neither Facebook nor MySpace is on the list of partners at press time.
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