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OpenSocial is a standard set of developer tools that allows programmers to create applications for multiple social networking sites, eliminating the need for them to rewrite the applications for each site that hosts it.

The alliance already includes most of the major social networking sites including MySpace, Bebo, Orkut and LinkedIn. Facebook is a notable absentee, however, the developers of its major applications have already stated their intention to modify their applications for the standard.

Though Yahoo is not a social networking site, the report in the New York Times suggests it's looking at the benefits of applications that would allow its users to share photos, music or movies across its services.

Yahoo's backing would bring a significant base of users to the alliance, which stands in opposition to Facebook's own platform which numbers around 200,000 developers and 16,000 applications.

Yahoo refused to comment on the story, saying it does not respond to rumours.