Social networking companies are fast adopting OpenSocial, Google’s open-source social network API to create applications for social networks. Over the last couple of years social network applications such as MySpace, Facebook, hi5, Ning, Bebo, etc. have matured and grown their user base. Now they have the user base, what do they do to keep the users and engage them in more interesting online social activities?

With the OpenSocial technology, companies can use the API to push their applications into social networks by creating plug-ins, widgets and build bridges to integrate and share data. Whether you use social networks for recreation or business, the bottom line is social network companies want to give their user base something more to satisfy their online social needs. Some social networks already provide network news feeds, sharing data about a friend’s choice in music or videos they have watched recently and the integration of embedded games in social networks. The hope is to create online addiction so that social networkers will keep coming back to the site. Ultimately, OpenSocial is a technology platform created to compete with the growing popularity of Facebook which has a close development platform unlike OpenSocial.

Google interviewed more than ten companies who are creators of social networks and companies that create viral applications for social networks. These companies have adopted OpenSocial as the development platform and interestingly many of them find that it is easy to use the OpenSocial API to build applications for their social network platform. Let’s see what ideas they have that will reinvent the rules of social engagement in social networks.

OpenSocial Adopters

Ning
Ning was launched in October 2005 and was co-founded by Marc Andreesen and Gina Bianchini. Ning hopes to compete with MySpace and Facebook. The platform was written in Java and the website in PHP. Ning is free for users who wish to build social networks about anything. All social networks are hosted on Ning’s servers. The free social networks include ads. Business Ning does not have ads but has a fixed monthly fee.

As of 21st November 2007, Ning has 125,000 social networks.

Ning talks about OpenSocial

Oberon Media
Oberon Media is a multi-platform casual games company with offices in New York, Seattle, London, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo. Oberon Media provides solutions on four platforms – PC/Online, Mobile, Interactive TV and Retail.

Oberon Media talks about OpenSocial

RockYou
RockYou has ingeniously tapped into the fun side of the web by creating self-expression widgets. Self-expression widgets are used to enhance the look and feel of blogs and personal websites. RockYou has also created self-expressive applications on Facebook. Jia Shen is the co-founder of Rockyou.com

RockYou talks about OpenSocial

Qloud
Qloud provide unlimited, on-demand, free music from an endless library. Qloud is embedded within social networks and users can discover and share music in the social network environment.

Qloud talks about OpenSocial

Plaxo
Plaxo provides an online address book service. It was co-founded by Sean Parker (Napster), Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students. In August 2007, Plaxo Pulse was released. It provides the ability to share content from multiple sources across social web.

Plaxo is the first site to show a working verson of OpenSocial container.

Plaxo talks about OpenSocial

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-oriented networking site for professional networking. As of November 2007, LinkedIn has 16 million registered users. The head office is located in Mountain View, California.

LinkedIn talks about OpenSocial

hi5
hi5 has over 50 million members with personal pages. hi5 maintains its strong hold in Central America and is a global brand for young people and the CEO is Ramu Yalamanchi.

hi5 talks about OpenSocial

FotoFlexer
FotoFlexer is the world’s most advanced online image editor. It was founded by Arbor Labs by a team of graduate students and alumni from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Sharam Shirazi is the CEO of Arbor Labs. Inc.

FotoFlexer talks about OpenSocial

Flixster
Flixster is a community site for movie fans. It has an online database of information about films and actors and has the ability for individual users to review and rate films.

In June 2007, Flixster created the movies application on Facebook.

Flixster talks about OpenSocial

E-Junkie
E-Junkie provides shopping car and buy now buttons to let users sell downloads and tangible products on their site, ebay, MySpace, etc. There’s no transaction limit, bandwidth, set up fee or transaction fee to use E-Junkie’s services.

E-Junkie talks about OpenSocial

Shelfari
Shelfari is a social media site where online community of book readers come together to share interests, opinions and recommendations about books. Shelfari allows users to build virtual bookshelves of titles they own or have read and users can rate, review and tag books. Shelfari was launched in October 2006.

Shelfari talks about OpenSocial

Slide
Slide helps people to express themselves and tell stories through personalized photos and videos created on Slide.com. Slide has 134 million unique global viewers each month.

Widgets that Slide created consists of Slideshows, Guestbooks, SkinFlix and FunFix which are popular on social network sites, i.e. MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, etc. SuperPoke and Top Friends, two popular applications are on Facebook. Slide was launched in 2005 and was founded by Max Levchin (PayPal).

Slide talks about OpenSocial

Bleacher Report
Bleacher Report is a sports social network. Bleacher Report takes a new approach to sports media that combines open source, collaborative process with comprehensive in-depth coverage, opinion and analysis on sports.

Bleacher Report talks about OpenSocial

iLike
iLike is a website that allows users to download and share music. iLike has a free Facebook application which allows users to play clips of music they like on their profile, show concert they are going to and play music trivia quiz. As of November 2007, iLike has more than 15 million users.

iLike talks about OpenSocial

Hungry Machine
Hungry Machine is web development group specializing in the design and development of Ruby on Rails applications. Hungry Machine has a lot of experience in developing applications on Facebook platform. Some of Hungry Machine’s applications are Visual Bookshelf suite, Party suite and Game suite.

Hungry Machine talks about OpenSocial