It’s only been about a month since Google launched OpenSocial, its development platform for social networking applications. But already developers are frustrated with how half-baked the whole thing is. Russ Whitman, the founder of MediaPops, a startup that launched at TechCrunch 40, reports to us in an e-mail:

While we were initially very excited, we have learned the hard way just how limited the release truly is. My dev group has been discussing the issues in the Google forum trying to figure out how to build our service through OpenSocial. From our experience its not even a beta platform. The concept of “write once, distribute broadly” is not accurate and core functionality components are missing.

Its clear we are pre-Beta at this point, with Google telling developers they are hoping to launch 1.0 early next year. Any company hoping to leverage Open Social as a means to grow its user base similarly to the Facebook growth model will need to wait at least until February to get started, if its ready then. In the end my hope is that Open Social becomes more than just hype to compete with Facebook.

In our opinion the fundamental problem lies in the core value of Open Social - it’s a unique partnership between Google, Containers/Hosts, and Developers. Getting all on the same page is going to be a ton of work. The opportunity is clear, but the path to get there will be difficult for sure. We remain excited about the vision, but are disappointed with the current state of the union. It’s clear that they announced too soon, and clearly Open Social is NOT Open for Business. (sigh)

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