Friendster.com today
announced that it has deployed the OpenSocial standard application programming
interfaces (APIs) as part of the Friendster Developer Program. Companies and
individual developers can now use the OpenSocial standard to introduce their
applications, or features, to Friendster’s 75 million users around the
world.

OpenSocial support is a significant
enhancement and extension to the successful Friendster Developer Program,
launched in late 2007. Friendster was only the second major social network to
launch a robust developer platform, and since then, the Friendster Developer
Program has been successful with both users and developers alike. Since its
launch, over 10 million unique users have added “apps,” most users
add several apps, and about half a million apps are being added by users to
their profile pages each day. There are thousands of developers registered for
the Friendster Developer Program, there are about 2,000 members of the
Friendster Developer Platform Group on Friendster, over 450 apps have been
deployed on Friendster, and thousands more apps are currently under development
by third-party developers.

• Friendster is the only way for
  developers to reach 55 million users in Asia
  on a single social network.
• The Friendster Developer
  Program has a completely open revenue model. It is free, there is no
  revenue share with Friendster, and virtually any monetization model is
  allowed on Friendster. Ads are allowed anywhere in apps - unlike other
  social networks - so developers can even place ads as part of their
  app on the profile page for a dramatic increase in page views and
  corresponding advertising revenues. Friendster is the only social network
  to allow developer ads on the profile page.
• The Friendster user base is
  mostly distinct from other social networks. OpenSocial developers can
  reach tens of millions of new users because Friendster’s user base
  does not overlap much with those of other social networks. For example,
  the highest overlap with any top social network is 18%, so depending on
  the social network, at least 82% of Friendster’s 57 million monthly
  unique visitors in July are new users that developers cannot reach any
  other way.**
• It’s easy. Developers
  reveal that it’s straightforward to port an existing app to
  Friendster.
• Viral support has been built-in
  by Friendster for all apps. Friendster has introduced several viral
  features to enable a user of an app to share it with their friends, but in
  respectful, thoughtful ways, such as aggregating these app invitations
  into a single email digest that is only received periodically. As a
  result, friends aren’t inundated with too many email invitations to
  try new apps from their friends. And, users have a new setting allowing
  them to control whether they receive these app invitations via email.