Friendster Next Up For Developer Platform

By now, you can pretty much call it a necessity for a social network to offer a platform for developers to create applications for. First was Facebook, and now MySpace, LinkedIn, Hi5, and several others have joined the fray.

Friendster is the latest addition, having announced that it is working on the Friendster Developer Program. This set of APIs will be just like other offerings, allowing developers to build applications that can be inserted into the profiles of Friendster users, and will also let developers keep the revenue from their apps, as Facebook does.

What stands out about Friendster's platform, however, is that it will focus on getting developers to integrate existing widgets into the service rather than requiring them to build completely new applications. That's right… the Friendster platform will be compatible with existing widgets.

Friendster seems to have developed a better plan than Tagged, which announced earlier this month that it plans to essentially clone the Facebook Platform in hopes of making it as easy as possible for the slew of Facebook developers to make the move. Though this sounds like a great idea, Friendster's more “universal” approach should cater to even more developers, and not just those on Facebook.

In addition to the new platform, plans have also been announced that there will be a directory for users to search through available widgets, and integration with the ?My Network Activity? area of the social network, which works similarly to the Facebook News Feed.

Developers can already access the Friendster APIs at the new developer homepage, although the official launch is slated for November 30th. Expect the widget directory to launch on this day as well.

Friendster has been around longer than both Facebook and MySpace, having launched in 2002. Also, Friendster is no small social network as its collection of 50 million users outnumbers the 46 million who currently use Facebook. It will be interesting to see how developers react to yet another platform, though this one should require the least amount of additional labor.