Friendster announced today that it is now supporting both Facebook and Opensocial apps. Integration with these has now become part of the Friendster Developer Program, though they’ve been supporting OpenSocial since August.
“For the developers that have invested resources in developing and launching a Facebook app, Friendster has now made it very easy for them to ‘port’ these applications to Friendster, enabling them to tap into Friendster’s 80 million users,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster. “For Web 2.0 companies that have developed apps using Facebook and OpenSocial APIs, they now have the flexibility to choose between approaches when launching applications on Friendster.”
Said companies will be interested to know that Friendster is the biggest social network in Asia, so this news probably shouldn’t be taken too lightly. 60 out of 80 million of Frienster’s users are in Asia. There is also the fact that Friendster’s user base does not overlap significantly with other social networks, so developers would potentially be reaching a whole lot more people than if they were just putting their apps on Facebook, for example. Friendster only has 22% overlap with Facebook, and is a top 10 global website and the 3rd largest social network in the world in terms of traffic, with over 19.4 billion page views a month.
Justin Smith at Inside Facebook notes, “Friendster is less restrictive about which parts of the application can be monetized. Developers can put ads on any real estate they control, including the profile page.”
It certainly sounds like a great opportunity for developers looking to take their applications global. Facebook’s opening of an international headquarters in Dublin may lead to other interesting opportunities down the road as well.
