Ning Launches Support for OpenSocial

Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 10th, 2008 9:30 AM

Today, Ning announced that they now support OpenSocial version 0.7. While one step away from the latest version of OpenSocial, this is the first time that applications have been available on the white-label social network platform. The platform will lunch with 25 to 30 applications including Box.net, PollDaddy, Shopit, and Emote! by RockYou. There also appears to be a poking application called “BuddyPoke” but we are unaware of who the developer behind it is.

Ning did say that they are launching their own applications that were developed in-house. The site continues to grow quickly, attracting over 3.2 million people domestically last month according to Compete.com. Now profiles across networks will have access to applications to add some personal flare. The concept of having a distributed white-label social networks with access to all the OpenSocial applications is a powerful one.

Soon enough it will be all about choosing the platform you want to use for your organization, all of which leverage a single standard to make applications installable across all. Well, that’s how it would be if everything goes right for OpenSocial. Unfortunately there are a few hurdles that the standard still needs to surpass. One of which is the development of applications using the OpenSocial standard that organizations would find to be valuable.

For now, you can leverage these applications on your custom Ning network. For those developers that are always staying on top of the latest standards, Ning will support OpenSocial version 0.8 “in the coming months”. Not sure that this really provides substantial guidance but at least we know they are moving forward. Now go join the T.I. network and install your favorite applications! Also, check out the latest T.I. video below. It’s mad deep