In a move signifying the influence of the Facebook platform in the social web, Friendster has announced that it has deployed supporter for the Facebook platform. Developers can now choose between the Facebook Platform, OpenSocial, or Friendster’s API to launch applications on the platform. Whether or not Facebook developers will actually choose to launch on Friendster is unknown but it just became a whole lot easier.

This appears to be the first use of Facebook’s open-source platform offering that they released earlier this year. It appears that launching your Facebook application will be as simple as requesting a new API Key from Friendster. Developers can learn more by visiting http://www.friendster.com/developer. This is a big win for Facebook who has decided to avoid the OpenSocial standard for the time being, instead choosing to focus on expanding their existing platform offerings.

In addition to choosing not to use OpenSocial, Facebook has decided to launch Facebook Connect instead of partnering with Google on their Friend Connect product. While none of the distributed login services offered by any of the platforms have been successful at spreading, Facebook and Google have been extremely slow in rolling out their new services.

While Bebo was the first to implement Facebook standards for applications, Friendster is the first to release Facebook support using their open-source platform. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues to other social networks. This is a big announcement for both Friendster and Facebook.

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.

Friendster, the social networking site that has been long-forgotten by most in the United States, is looking to ramp up its business with a fresh influx of cash and the hiring of a new CEO. The company is hiring Richard Kimber, an ex-Googler who ran the South Asian operations at the search giant. This makes a lot of sense considering Friendster is the largest social network in Southeast Asia, primarily in the Philippines and Singapore.

Currently the company has over 75 million registered users but the Asian market for social networks is still in its early phase. There is increasing competition from both local start-ups as well as Facebook and MySpace who have both made significant strides in Asia to expand their presence. So will Friendster rise to become the largest Asian social network?

Possibly. They have a significant lead over competitors and they continue to grow rapidly in Friendster. The business model in Asia is significantly different though since advertising spending abroad is substantially less than in the United States. Many of the competing social networks generate a large portion of their revenue from virtual gifts rather than advertising.

What’s clear is that the Asian market for social networks has yet to play out. Over the coming years we will see fierce competition where a number of large players have substantial war chests and sizable traction. For the time being it looks like Friendster will continue their upward momentum in the region.

Social networks have been racing to get their new languages launched. Today, Friendster announced that they are now available in Indonesian. Friendster has over 8 million registered users and 4 million monthly unique visitors in Indonesia alone. While Friendster is popular for dominating southeast Asia, the other social networks each have their own location and Facebook is also expanding rapidly into new territories.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Facebook opened their translations application to the general public and earlier this week MySpace’s latino portal exited beta. Social networks (or social platforms if you prefer) have realized that the largest players will most likely remain as large players for the long term. While there will be slight adjustments, the odds of a Facebook or MySpace crumbling overnight is highly unlikely as there are now dedicated user bases that have put in substantial time to build up their profiles.

Just as the internet has global appeal, so do social networks. They are currently the most effective tool for connecting the masses and are also transforming the way that society interacts with one another. Just as in the offline world, languages will continue to be a barrier to communications but photos and videos will continue to help cultures merge together. I continue to believe that social networks are the most effective platform for spreading values and ideas.

Over the next 6 months look for lack of language support to become a thing of the past as all the social networks become multi-lingual.