Yahoo is still fighting off Microsoft’s marriage proposal. But it’s open to making more friends.

On March 25, Yahoo, the largest online destination, teamed up with two other Web titans—search goliath Google and leading social network MySpace—to form the OpenSocial Foundation. The not-for-profit, which is scheduled to launch within the next 90 days, is dedicated to preserving open source programming codes that allow Web developers to build applications that work across all major Web sites. “We believe common sets of specifications are beneficial to the developer community at large and enrich the experience of the Web both on and off Yahoo,” said Wade Chambers, Yahoo’s VP of Platforms, in a media conference call.

Google launched the OpenSocial platform in October in hopes of solving two problems created by the increasingly social Web. The first issue concerned developers. Facebook’s May decision to open up its popular real estate to applications from third parties spurred thousands of developers to create programs for the social networking site. The enthusiastic response of Facebook users to the new programs encouraged other social networks to follow suit. Soon most sites were allowing outsiders to create programs for them.

All the opening up, however, presented developers with a dilemma: who to program for? Most social networks had unique codes that demanded developers build programs specifically to work on their site. Most development teams, however, had staffs composed of only a handful of programmers capable of creating just a few such specific applications at a time.

If developers didn’t make their programs work across sites, they risked losing out on valuable audiences who might use their program only if they could get it to work on their favorite Web destination. Worse, developers risked their program failing to get virally distribution because a user’s friends were not all on the same site.

The developers’ dilemma presented a problem for Web site owners as well. If developers had to choose one or two sites to program for, and your site wasn’t on the short list, you could miss out on the hot new program. Web surfers wanting to use a particular widget—such as Slide’s popular photo sharing widget or iLike’s music sharing and discovery service—would potentially ignore your site if that particular application wasn’t available.

Many sites, including Google, found themselves quickly faced with the flipside of the developers’ dilemma. Facebook was already on most developers’ short lists, thanks to the early release of its APIs and its global audience, which now reaches more than 70 million people. Without common codes, MySpace, Yahoo, Google’s Orkut social network, AOL, and myriad other sites would find themselves competing for the remaining slots on individual developers’ lists.

It’s no wonder then that Google, whose own Orkut social network lagged behind MySpace and Facebook in the US, chose to create a common set of codes for developers. It’s also no wonder why MySpace, which opened up comparatively late, quickly signed on.

Despite already being the most popular site on the Web, Yahoo has a lot to gain by joining. The company suffers from a lack of innovation. Several of its social properties, such as Yahoo 360, have failed to take off. Moreover, it has lost some mindshare among young people—those most likely to pass around many developers’ applications — to hotter social networking properties. By joining OpenSocial Yahoo ensures it doesn’t miss out on some developers’ next great creation. It also gets an opportunity to increase adoption of its own properties such as photo-sharing site Flickr by enabling developers to more easily create programs that spread Yahoo’s offerings onto other popular sites.

Getting on the OpenSocial bandwagon now is particularly important because of where the Web is going. Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management, sees a future where social applications will live on nearly every site and audiences will take their favorite programs and content wherever they wish. In that world, making sure your content is easily distributable and that your site can support a variety of different programs is key.

Moreover, cute little widgets are quickly evolving into full-fledged programs. It may not seem so bad if your site doesn’t support an application allowing people to turn each other into vampires. But it could be terrible, say, if everyone began using a widget notifying them of important business emails and they couldn’t see alerts when on your site. “In the future we see applications for OpenSocial and the MySpace developer platform moving beyond toys and widgets and becoming real features,” said Steve Pearman, MySpace’s SVP of Product Strategy.

OpenSocial is far from perfect. Developers often still have a lot of work to do to customize their applications so they truly work across all the sites that have signed up. Also, like any open source standard, there is some worry that competing developers will be able to easily copy existing applications built upon the APIs.
The other problem with OpenSocial is that it is still far from comprehensive. Microsoft has, notably, not signed on. But, even Yahoo says it would welcome the tech giant’s friendship in this respect. “I think any large platform should be able to participate and we would welcome anyone to participate,” said Chambers.

Article Source - http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/yahoo_myspace_a.html

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By ROBERT A. GUTH

A well-regarded vice president in Microsoft Corp’s online group quit to join a small online-ad agency, a sign of continuing turmoil within the software giant’s Internet operations.

Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media officer of Microsoft’s MSN online service, will leave the software maker after seven years to join Spot Runner Inc., a privately held Los Angeles firm that uses the Internet to help companies create advertisements for television.

The departure follows Microsoft’s bid for rival Yahoo Inc. and comes at a time of widespread management tumult as companies try to figure out their place in the fast-changing online-advertising business. Last week, Google Inc.’s head of online sales and operations left the Internet-search giant to become chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., the fast-growing, four-year-old Internet firm.

At Microsoft, Ms. Bradford spent her career trying to inject advertising-industry expertise into the company’s software culture. The company has tried but largely failed to expand its share of the online-ad market against stronger rivals such as Google, prompting the bid for Yahoo, which has so far rejected the offer.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Microsoft’s online group is grappling with a host of challenges, including a reorganization last month and departure of several key executives, of which Ms. Bradford is the latest.

Microsoft is also in the throes of integrating aQuantive Inc., an online-ad company it bought last year for $6 billion. That merger has elevated executives at aQuantive, a shift that threatens to displace some existing Microsoft employees, say some insiders.

Ms. Bradford, who before Microsoft worked in ad sales at BusinessWeek, was one of the few high-ranking Microsoft executives who joined the company with experience in the advertising industry. That skill set has become increasingly important as Microsoft attempts to turn around its money-losing online business.

Ms. Bradford’s departure was announced in an email to employees from her boss, Microsoft Vice President Satya Nadella. For now, Ms. Bradford’s position will be filled by Greg Nelson, a Microsoft general manager in charge of MSN’s international operations.

Ms. Bradford at times struggled to prove herself to Microsoft’s higher-ups but is credited with building tighter ties between Microsoft and large advertisers and ad agencies. She also inspired strong loyalty among Microsoft’s online-ad sales team, which she headed before taking her current Microsoft position.

“It’s a devastating thing for people on the sales side,” said a person familiar with Microsoft’s online group.

At Spot Runner, Ms. Bradford will become the company’s executive vice president of national marketing services, which will focus on attracting more large, national advertisers to the company’s services.

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Users can access an English-language beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace from the company’s Web site at no charge.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Tuesday it has made available for worldwide public testing a hosted version of its widely used Microsoft Office productivity software.

As part of the trial, users can access an English-language beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the offering is called, from the company’s Web site at no charge. Microsoft for the past several months has conducted a private beta program for Office Live that’s drawn more than 100,000 participants, according to the company.

Office Live Workspace lets users store and access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications on the Web through any computer with an Internet connection — even if the PC isn’t running Office on its hard drive.

That means a mobile worker could, say, create a Word document at his or her office, upload it to the service, and then access it later from virtually any PC.

Without Office Live, that same worker would have to carry the file around on a flash device or e-mail it to himself. Still, the document could only be downloaded and opened on a computer running a Word-compatible application.

Office Live could also eliminate the insecure practice — often used by executives on the go — of downloading files to a public computer. Office Live users can store more than 1,000 documents on the service and also grant access authorization to their files to business colleagues and other third parties.

Office Live Workspace is part of the software-plus-services strategy that Microsoft unveiled last year. The campaign is meant to bolster the company’s presence in the booming Web services market while protecting its multibillion-dollar packaged software franchise.

The effort has seen Microsoft roll out a number of Web services under its Windows Live brand, including an online storage site called SkyDrive and a social networking site called Spaces.

Microsoft’s assault on the Web is in no small part a response to advances by archrival Google. In recent months, the search engine company has introduced a host of new online services. Of those, the biggest threat to Microsoft is Google Apps. The offering features free or low-cost versions of Office-style productivity applications that are hosted on the Web.

The advantage of Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s approach is that, unlike Office Live, users don’t need to purchase any pricey boxed software for the service to work. The downside is that users for the most part can’t get to the applications without an Internet connection.

Microsoft said it plans to roll out Office Live beta programs in languages other than English in the coming weeks.

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Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.

The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

Flash phone

Nokia’s S60 platform, which uses Symbian, will be the first to take advantage of Silverlight.

S60 is used in handsets built by LG and Samsung as well as Nokia and is the most popular smart phone software platform with more than 53% market share.

It is used in Nokia’s latest N96 phone, the successor to its popular N95.

Other handsets and internet tablets running different software will follow at a later date, according to the firm.

Silverlight allows designers and developers to produce rich web applications that are independent of browser, operating system and handset.

Microsoft has stressed its value for developing Web 2.0 applications that would work on a computer, but also on any other device including mobile phones.

The software enters a marketplace already dominated by Adobe’s Flash, and its recently launched Air product.

Flash is already on millions of mobile phones.

Adobe has agreements with 18 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide including Nokia.

And, according to Adobe, 450 million devices have been shipped with the cut-down version of Flash, known as Flash Lite.

Microsoft will hope to compete with this presence.

The firm is currently working on a version of Sliverlight for its own Windows Mobile software.

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