Tagged To Copy Facebook Platform For Its Own Developer Offering

With all of the attention that the Facebook Platform has received, the latest rumor about about the new developer platform from social networking site Tagged has to be the most interesting… at least for developers.

Back in June, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman discussed his plans to offer a platform more like Facebook, followed by MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe expressing that ?the [Facebook] platform is interesting,? and announcing that MySpace will become more open to developers. Just yesterday, Hi5 also publicized its own plans to develop a platform.

But, what these companies failed to notice, is that each of their platforms is proprietary meaning that developers must port their applications (meaning lots of code changes) before they will work on another platform. The interesting twist to the Tagged rumor from Inside Facebook is that their developer platform would almost be an exact replica of the Facebook API, so as to make it as easy as possible for developers to add their creations to the 7th largest social networking service on the web (according to comScore).

“Today, I got word from a credible source that fast growing Tagged, which has well over 40 million members, is building a platform that will exactly mimic the Facebook Platform API,” stated Justin Smith. “In other words, if successfully implemented, Facebook apps will be able to run on Tagged without any significant code changes (developers will have to manage the different user communities, of course).”

If this information is in fact true, it would mean a lot fewer coding changes for developers to get existing Facebook applications onto Tagged. With 5226 applications already in the Facebook app directory as of right now, Tagged could easily have a wide array of apps for its 40 million users in no time at all.

Although this would hardly put Tagged ahead of Facebook, it could put the social network ahead of several of its competitors who plan to take up to a year to come up with their platforms, not to mention the time developers will have to take to recode.

What could prove overwhelming, as Smith also noted, is the fact that “Tagged will have the task of keeping up to date with Facebook?s changes, even if they build their own custom extensions.”

As more social networks follow the example set by Facebook, it will be interesting to see how developers respond to the ever increasing variety of platforms to develop for. Right now, I would say that those with the most users stand the best chance of having a successful platform launch, as developers surely will not waste their time with small sites that offer no benefits compared to the labor put in.