Google’s Social Networking Plans

2007-10-09 20:14:06

More Information On Google’s Social Networking Plans

Business Week has a long article expanding on the Google Social Nework Platform story we wrote about last month.

Key facts from the article: Orkut is 1/4 the size of MySpace (Comscore shows a much closer race),but they’ve recently taken the lead in the Asia/Pacific region. Orkutis also very strong in Latin America, with double the traffic ofMySpace and Facebook combined.

Business Week also confirms our estimated November 5 launch date fora new set of APIs which let developers build applications that span anumber of Google services. We heard the from sources here in SiliconValley; their sources are third-party developers based in India.

Google plans to open up Orkut as a Platform, with fewer restrictionsthan Facebook. As an example, they say, application developers may beable to host applications on their own servers (Facebook does notpermit this). Other Google services will be made available as well “Ifthe plan succeeds, users might begin to see applications combiningOrkut with Google Maps that would show where friends are located.”

And the article is also confirming that Google is thinking beyondtheir own properties, too. “For example, an Orkut widget for Facebookmight enable Facebook users to see whether their Orkut friends areonline through their Facebook pages.”