I had the opportunity to meet Jeff Roberto of Friendster over lunch today, along with Ben Koe of JamiQ, Howie Chang from TDM, Michael Lim of Comiqs, Mohan Belani of E27 and Ridzuan Ashim of Widgeo.us. Jeff, who was in town for yesterday’s Google DevFest (Google‘s first-ever Hackathon in Southeast Asia), shared with us the latest developments on Friendster‘s developer program and the company’s support of Google’s OpenSocial.
He explains why developers should port their apps to Friendster and the various monetization models they can employ on its platform. No surprises here – advertising is by far still the most viable revenue source. Interestingly, Friendster can and will tie developers up with brand advertisers for specialized marketing campaigns.
So it seems like everyone’s trying to open up their platforms and make friends with developers of all stripes. Local developers for some time have already been hard at work developing apps for both Facebook (check out the Facebook App Developers group) as well as the iPhone. Nokia will engage local developers with Forum Nokia on 31st October.
Crowdsourcing applications is the ‘in’ thing.
