AOL and Netlog join Google's OpenSocial

Thu May 29 2008, 13:08 PM

Time Warner's AOL portal and Netlog, one of Europe's leading social networking platforms, are joining Google's OpenSocial initiative.

Deal Details

Bebo, the social network AOL acquired in Mar, already supports OpenSocial and AOL plans to closely integrate the network with its own properties such as AIM and ICQ. Netlog says it expects to play an important role in evangelising the OpenSocial standard throughout Europe this summer. While most applications will initially be developed in English, the social networking site says it also intends to put more effort into localisation. The majority of Netlog's members use the website in their native language, and Netlog says it will actively help developers localise their applications in various European languages.

Netlog won't automatically allow all OpenSocial applications on its platform; new applications will have to pass a quality check before they are placed on a whitelist that users will have access to. Additionally, to avoid "application spam", Netlog users won't be able to send applications to their contacts.

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for developing applications that can be deployed across multiple social networking platforms. Google released the specifications in Nov 2007, and partners include MySpace, Yahoo!, hi5 and Friendster.