Official: MySpace joins Google's "OpenSocial" platform

I never saw this coming but it makes a whole lot of sense.

MySpace have announced that they're supporting Google's OpenSocial APIs in favor of building out its own third-party developer platform.

From the press release:

MySpace, the world’s largest social network, and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial— 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’s announcement underscores MySpace’s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.

TechCrunch has published notes from the official press call, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt is reported as saying “we’ve been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this”. Wow. That's got to be one of the best kept secrets in Silicon Valley for quite some time.

TechCrunch says that Bebo have also signed on, adding to an array of partners which now includes: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

That's some serious ammunition to backup Google's combine and conquer strategy in taking on Facebook. How will the latter respond? As Mike Arrington says, Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial?