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Google Releases OpenSocial Specs

Google on Wednesday released new information about OpenSocial, the search giant's social networking alliance, touting its reach of more than 300 million users, more than 4,500 applications and 150 million installations. Facebook, which is not part of OpenSocial, has more than 30,000 applications and 700 million installations, by comparison. "We expect to reach 500 million OpenSocial users by the end of the quarter. It's also very international, as social networking is a global phenomenon," said Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management.

Google obviously plays a major part in the evolution of the social networking alliance, which includes MySpace, Friendster and Hi5, but Kraus noted that just 10% of its major developers come from Google. In all, OpenSocial's main developer community is about 350.

As Vic Gundotra explained at OpenSocial's November 2007 launch, "The more applications, the more usage. More users means more searches. And, more searches means more revenue for Google. The goal is to grow the overall market, not just to increase market share."

Read the whole story at Cnet News.com »

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