Google has recruited MySpace to join the OpenSocial fold, after announcing plans to implement a standard programming interface for building social apps online.
Mashable claims the two have been secretly working on the project all along.
OpenSocial's API standards are designed to evolve with contribution from the open source community, and as new features are developed by its partners.
MySpace joins Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING as founding partners in OpenSocial.
Despite Google's assertion that it would be happy to work with Facebook, Fortune divulges that the popular social networking site was not invited to the OpenSocial party.
Meanwhile, a Hitwise graph shows the overall traffic market share of the OpenSocial collective to be more than five times greater than Facebook.
But it may not be TKO just yet. In mid-October, Facebook released a cryptic invitation for the unveiling of a new ad platform this November 6th. According to John Battelle, it's a contender for AdWords.
In an earlier development last week, after the Microsoft-Facebook deal, Google unveiled plans to take Facebook head-on.
Codenamed "Maka-Maka," according to TechCrunch, Google plans to add a social matrix atop its applications, from Gmail to Google Maps. Google will also incorporate "activity feeds" (a la Facebook's "news feeds"), using the same engine that powers Google Reader.
And like Facebook, the search giant plans to open its back-end to developers — starting with social network Orkut, and ultimately spreading to all things Google. It's even taking it a step further by making those third-party apps compatible with non-Google parts of the web, such as competing social networks.
At Maka-Maka's core, Google sees the entire web as its playing field, instead of limiting social features and user apps to a closed-in social network.
It must first, however, work to match what Facebook has built. In the six months since Facebook originally opened its back-end, over 4,000 third-party apps have landed on the site.
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