Not to be outdone by the Facebook/Microsoft partnership that's been slowly but surely forming, Google has just launched a new social network applicaton framework called OpenSocial, and the first big player to sign up is none other than the number 1 social network (in terms of unique visitors) MySpace. Other sites jumping on Google's bandwagon include Bebo, LinkedIn, and of course Orkut which is Google's own social network that is really big in Latin America and Asia but nowhere else for some reason.

OpenSocial seeks to do for other social networking sites what the Facebook Platform has done for Facebook: create an ecology of 3rd party applications that tie in to the social network through API's to enable expanded functionality (either useful or playful) beyond the core suite of tools, and at the same time providing a new outlet to embed Google ads. Pretty clever concept to make it a somewhat universal platform, and it will be interesting to see if it has the same impact that Facebook has had on the web development community.