Friendster Launches OpenSocial Support

Today, Friendster announced that they have deployed OpenSocial version 0.7 for their platform. In the coming months, the company will begin rolling out version 0.8, the version that MySpace announced support for in the past couple weeks. The most significant part of this announcement is that now developers that have build applications on other social platforms supporting OpenSocial will be able to make the accessible via Friendster much quicker.

In contrast to Facebook’s 30,000 plus applications, Friendster has only 569 applications. That’s not to suggest that the applications are not being used though. According to Friendster’s own statistics, “over 10 million unique users have added ‘apps’” since the launch of the platform last year. While less significant than some of the larger platforms, this is still a substantial number.

Monetization will continue to be a challenging issue for Friendster though given that their primary demographic is southeast Asia and the majority of advertising dollars are spent domestically. Whether or not the company is generating substantial revenue, the company has been able to expand its reach in Asia where the competition continues to heat up.

This is the first news to come out of the company since they announced a new CEO and $20 million in funding.