Friendster, the social network that has seen explosive growth in Asia but continues to lag behind Facebook and MySpace elsewhere, has launched support for OpenSocial apps on its development platform. Friendster initially launched its platform last October, but has restricted available applications to those developed especially for Friendster’s API (much as a developer would have to develop specifically for Facebook).
Beginning today, Friendster will allow developers to submit OpenSocial compliant apps (up to the .7 release of the API). These applications will all be screened and then entered into the network’s application directory (again, similar to Facebook’s). Friendster says that there will be no apparent difference to users between an OpenSocial and Friendster application.
Friendster is one of the web’s older social networks, and was once a leading player in the space, turning down an acquisition offer from Google for $30 million in 2003. Since then the company has been unable to keep up in American markets, but has done very well in Asia, with a reported 55 million users spanning the continent (they also make up 70% of the site’s registered users).
Google’s OpenSocial platform allows developers to create a a single application that will work across multiple social newtorks that support the platform’s API. Along with Friendster, other major sites that have pledged support to the platform include MySpace, Bebo, and Six Apart.
While Friendster may not be nearly as big a player as MySpace or Facebook in the United States, it still has a vast audience in Asia. Because of the minimal amount of overlap seen between Asian and American markets (Facebook and MySpace have had difficulty expanding in some portions of Asia), the site offers developers a large number of potential new users. Its addition to the OpenSocial platform puts increasing pressure on Facebook to adopt some kind of open application standard, as developers will dislike having to reprogram their applications just to run on Facebook’s closed platform.
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This is actually the first I hear of Friendster. So do more people from India use that networking site? My experience has been more with blogging. Over the past couple years I’d say my traffic from India has tripled. Booksellers haven’t caught up yet though: people in this huge English proficient market still aren’t buying books published in the US, even with all the online availability, because postage doubles the price of the book.
US books are quite expensive compared to what you pay for books in India. Apart from that buying books online is not that of a fashion in India yet, although i believe there is some decent opportunity here.
http://www.Yocial.com
Friendster’s still around? To me that’s a bigger news than the fact that they added Open Social.
I think the obsession needs to end 2 separate social networking sites is enough. I have other things to do with my time like break records…
http://www.FliteRecord.com
Good for them
Hrm, on Twitter someone was just asking what our favorite opensocial app was.
That logo needs some yellow!
Social sites are going more open. We have OpenID, now comes OpenSocial
name one opensocial app
almost everyone in the Philippines is using friendster…
Could http://www.haarg.com be a new social platform?
harrgh - sounds phlegm related