Last night OpenSocial applications went live on Orkut starting in India. Given that India is one of the most popular networks on Orkut, this is pretty big news. In contrast to Facebook which had overloaded profiles thanks to the influx of over 20,000 new applications, Orkut is limiting users to adding up to 25 applications to their profile. “In the coming weeks” Orkut applications will be going live worldwide.

Orkut was one of the only remaining social platforms to not go live. This means that you can now develop applications for Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, hi5 and Orkut. These social networks comprise the largest demographic base. There are other platforms that are also leveraging the OpenSocial standard but for now these are the largest of the pack. Facebook continues to lead the way with the most rapid user adoption and the existence of large ad networks that can drive users at launch time.

OpenSocial is still in the early stages and there is much development that still needs to be done. It is an unproven platform but based on the feedback received from early users, it has made it substantially easier to port applications across multiple networks and has reduced overall development time. As of yet, I have no details on the viral channels available to Orkut developers but should have an update later today.

On a conference call announcing the Open Social foundation a couple weeks ago, Joe Kraus of Google at one point mentioned that Orkut would be launching their platform the same week that Hi5 did. Since then Google has been quiet about Orkut. A post on the Orkut developer blog states that they’ve discovered and fixed new bugs and the launch will be soon. There is no date anymore on the launch but one week prior to launching the platform Google will announce it on the Orkut blog.

It has been challenging for Orkut to launch and based on the feedback from a number of developers that I’ve spoken with, rushing to launch on other platforms isn’t really a high priority anymore as they are realizing that the growth is not as viral as it was on Facebook. I’ve also heard mixed feedback about the Hi5 platform and other platforms but then again for the leaders on the platform they have a nice head start but that’s about it.

I’m not quite sure what’s holding Orkut back but considering it’s Google’s platform they should probably be first to launch since they invented the OpenSocial standard. Regardless, it appears as though Facebook is continuing to dominate the social platforms. It will be interesting to see if OpenSocial can gain momentum as other platforms launch and more viral channels are opened.  Do you use Orkut?  Are you a developer of an app that’s about to launch on Orkut?   What do you think the future holds for this platform?

If managing your applications on three platforms wasn’t already enough for you, two more platforms will be going live next week: Orkut and hi5. While there are few details as to viral distribution on Orkut, hi5 has provided details about their viral distribution channels. Of particular significance is that “there are no limits to how many friends a user can invite.” This sounds similar to the Facebook platform when it launched.

These launches will be more significant than the Bebo launch considering that hi5 and Orkut are the 8th and 10th (respectively) most visited sites on the web according to Alexa.com. With no limits on invitations for friends we may see a similar gold rush to those applications that launched on the Facebook platform. Both platforms will launch using the OpenSocial standard bringing the total number of potential users via OpenSocial far greater than Facebook.

Add together MySpace’s platform and Facebook’s viral distribution channels and hi5 is setting up to be a significant launch. Next week will surely be a big week as the reach of social platforms is set to almost double. For one person, attempting to monitor all the action on all the platforms is extremely challenging but extremely exciting. For development teams building on each of the platforms, being ready for launch on all sites is not only challenging but close to impossible.

This first quarter of this year has been transformational for the social platform space.