OpenSocial now comes standard on Your Own Social Network for Anything on Ning, which means that anyone can now create their own social network for free and add OpenSocial applications to that network in just a few seconds.


For every social network created on the Ning Platform, members are able to browse through a branded directory of OpenSocial applications to add to their profile pages with a single click. Today at launch, each social network on Ning offers over 25 OpenSocial applications from which to choose, including file sharing from Box.net, poll creation from Polldaddy and e-commerce from Shopit.

OpenSocial is now live across our more than 500,000 social networks this morning. This release replaces and improves NING's older “Gadgets” beta functionality, and enables Network Creators and their members to add all sorts of great new features, or Applications, to their profile pages with a single click.

In the coming months, there plan on expanding OpenSocial on your own social networks on Ning to allow applications to be placed on network main pages, and we'll also be rolling out v0.8 with support for the OpenSocial REST Protocol.

Here are a few other features of Ning's launch to highlight:

* On Ning, you define the visual style of your network. Every social network created on Ning has an OpenSocial directory by default. The directory automatically takes on the branding and visual design of the network.
* With support for gadgets.skins, OpenSocial applications on Ning can inherit the visual style of the member's profile page to which it's added. This is one area where Ning is unique from other general one-size-fits-all social networks, and Ning's OpenSocial applications are unique too.
* Every OpenSocial application is automatically integrated into the viral loops on your social network on Ning. The ability for OpenSocial applications to write to a member's latest activity feed, send messages on behalf of the member (via requestSendMessage) and spread using a network's default viral sharing options are there by default.