Friendster is OpenSocial-zied but half-baked

Well, here I go again regurgitating news you probably already know: Friendster now supports OpenSocial.  I had an opportunity to try the platform and am unhappy to report: it’s half-baked.  A few things you cannot do (yet):

• add any real viral channel to your app (you can’t post Activities, send Notification Messages, or share the App – I’ve personally gotten many “notImplemented” errors when trying myself)
• add icons to your OpenSocial app – you CAN however add icons to a Friendster widget
• submit your OpenSocial application to the directory
• get a response back from Developer Support about problems you’re having

While it’s fantastic that Friendster has finally jumped on the OpenSocial bandwagon (it took about an hour to port my app over from another OpenSocial container to Friendster), it really is frustrating when things don’t work exactly how they are suppose to.  I must mention that other OpenSocial containers also have half-baked OpenSocial implementations out in the wild.  Myspace has a fairly crippled version of OpenSocial and Bebo doesn’t even support it even though it is listed as an OpenSocial partner.

Hi5 is probably the most “advanced” user of OpenSocial with bold moves such as releasing real viral channels and keeping in tune with the OpenSocial shindig project.

Considering Facebook has the most successful application platform around (largely due to being the first mover in the space) and because viral channels were very liberal when it was first launched, you’d think that the others would follow suite and be even MORE liberal (not the opposite).  What to say.