Google says Orkut not late to open up

New Delhi: Google Inc, the web hunt and related to advertisement leader, said it is "not late" with the launch of OpenSocial applications on its societal networking portal Orkut, compared to the US-centric Facebook, as its stable applications are culturally and geographically suited for Orkut users.

Last month, Google opened up Orkut for 3rd political party developers by launching OpenSocial applications that lets users to add games, music etc. to their profile page.

"I don't believe we are late compared to Facebook. We wanted to be certain that the platform is stable for consumer launch. We launched the platform in November last twelvemonth for developers, so that they could begin edifice OpenSocial applications," Google's merchandise director Manu Rekhi told deoxyribonucleic acid Money.

OpenSocial supplies a common application scheduling interface (API) platform for societal applications across multiple websites, with standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can make applications to entree a societal network's friends and update feeds.

Rekhi said that many Orkut applications are built for India-specific users such as as Bollywood and cricket applications, which doesn't do sense on Facebook.

Rajat Agarwalla from Kolkata, who invented Scrabulous, the fifth-most popular application on Facebook, which touts of 3 million registered users, will establish the application on Orkut "next week".

"We will be releasing Scrabulous and ChessPro on Orkut adjacent hebdomad and I believe it to be equally successful on Orkut, if not more," Agarwalla said from his Kolkata office.

India and Federative Republic Of Brazil have the biggest user alkali for Orkut, whereas Facebook touts of heavy use from the United States and the UK. Many experts believe Facebook to be the innovator in the third-party application within social-networking space, and making money from it. Websites such as as Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, and XING etc have got already started implementing OpenSocial.

However, the Palo Alto, California-based Facebook is not portion of the OpenSocial platform, yet, but Google is unfastened to work with Facebook.

"We speak to everyone including Facebook, so we would be very happy and welcome if Facebook desires to be portion of this," Rekhi said.

The unfastened societal tendency took off some old age back, especially after Youtube allowed users to upload Youtube pictures on their websites. Facebook set more than construction to 3rd political party applications development.

However, Facebook critics see its construction as walled garden, where what haps on Facebook be givens to remain within it.

"So OpenSocial is going one measure additional expression that walled garden should not be there, so this is more than progressing," Rekhi said.

Orkut, which went unrecorded for 3rd political party application last month, said it is launching applications slowly.

"We have got got 28 application launched and have 100s of developers edifice on sandbox. Half of the applications were by North American Indian developers, and their quality is human race class," Rekhi said.

Orkut back ups a developer sandbox where they can compose applications using OpenSocial. Developer can anticipate their application to travel unrecorded on Orkut in 4-5 concern years after all the testing, blessings and security checks. On the other manus its challenger Facebook have over 20,000 applications on its platform with 140 new applications added per day.

Orkut had the first-mover advantage in Republic Of Republic Of India and almost got everyone within the 18-30 age section on board, however, Facebook have slowly started to eat away Orkut's marketplace share in India, and is attracting more than users on its site.

Facebooks touts of 70 million active users and its fastest growth demographic is those 25 old age old and older, while, Orkut have more than than 60% users from the age grouping of 18-25.

Orkut have development Centres in India, Brazil, the US, and a little squad in Zurich.

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