GHENT, Belgium, May 29 /PRNewswire/ --
- Localisation and Quality Key Criteria for New Applications
Netlog, Europe's leading social networking platform, today announced at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco that it has joined Google's OpenSocial initiative. Starting today, social networking applications developed using the OpenSocial standards can be made available to Netlog's 35 million users across Europe.
Netlog expects to play an important role in evangelizing the OpenSocial standard throughout Europe this summer. While most applications will initially be developed in English, the social networking site intends to put a lot of effort in localisation. The majority of Netlog's members use the website in their native language, which is one of the platform's key strengths. To build on this momentum, Netlog will actively help developers to localise their applications in various European languages.
In order to maintain the high quality standards its users have come to expect, Netlog won't automatically allow all OpenSocial applications on the platform. New applications will have to pass a quality check before they are placed on a whitelist that users have access to. In addition, to avoid the so-called application spam that plagues other networks, Netlog users won't be able to send applications to their contacts. Thus, users will remain fully in control of their profile and the applications on it.
"Developers can now easily tap into the Netlog audience of 35 million users across Europe using a global open standard", said Toon Coppens, Co-Founder and CTO of Netlog. "We are convinced OpenSocial is not only the best choice for developers and application providers, but also for our users who will have access to a white listed range of the most useful applications."
Netlog also believes that joining OpenSocial will make its platform more compelling for advertisers. "The development of quality applications, in combination with advertising and Netlog's unique credit eco-system, offers an unprecedented opportunity for companies to engage directly with their customers", Coppens continued.
The social networking site particularly expects an interest in applications that focus on communication, music, video and sharing photos, themes that are very popular among its users.
"We're really happy that Netlog supports OpenSocial, and that Netlog users will now be able to take advantage of OpenSocial applications," said Eric Tholome, Group Product Manager at Google. "OpenSocial is all about helping the internet become more social. Netlog's participation is a great step in that direction."
OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for developing applications that can be deployed across multiple social networking platforms. The specifications have originally been developed by Google and were released to the market in November 2007.
For more information on Netlog's support for OpenSocial, please visit http://en.netlog.com/go/developer.
About Netlog
Netlog is the leading European social network platform with a pan-European and local dimension. It is currently available in over 25 countries and 19 languages. Over 35 million youngsters are member of Netlog across Europe and generate over 4.5 billion page views per month throughout all countries. Netlog Nv is based in Ghent, Belgium and has 45 employees throughout Europe. Early 2007, Index Ventures and Atomico (Kazaa, Skype,Joost) invested in Netlog.
Netlog received the Red Herring Europe 100 award, the award 'Site of the Year' in 5 countries (Spain, France, UK, Germany and Italy) and Mashable Open web award for "Mainstream and large Social Networks" begin 2008.
For more information visit:
For further press information or photography, please contact: Ilona de Bok at LEWIS, the PR agency: Tel: +31(0)40-235-4600, Fax: +31(0)40-235-4601, Email: ilonadb@lewispr.com
Comments