Impetus Technologies, a leading player in the outsourced software product engineering services market, has announced the launch of its internal dedicated practice group for Google's OpenSocial platform and its related technologies. This group is incubated as an initiative from Impetus's R&D division, iLabs. The OpenSocial group will focus on pursuing the technology and business aspects of the OpenSocial platform.

OpenSocial is Google's newest initiative to bring all the social networking websites and applications under one set of specifications. This will facilitate the various social networking sites to function on a defined and consistent software platform. This will also enable the software developer community to write applications for social networks which would be inter-operable as well.

Impetus has been working on OpenSocial since its introduction in November 2007, and has expertly used this technology to develop commercial and production applications. Impetus has also collaborated with one of its clients to showcase OpenSocial products for renowned technology events like the Orkut Hackathon, Web2.0 Expo.

Speaking on the establishment of this OpenSocial group, Rachana Salgia, VP – Engineering R&D, Impetus Technologies said, "The OpenSocial group at Impetus will be developing business applications using OpenSocial. The group with its expertise in writing OpenSocial applications, OpenSocial widgets and collaborative applications will help us create new paradigms for the social networking domain."

Social networking is catching up as the fastest growing market on the Internet. It is the hottest trend among Internet-based businesses. It is estimated that the current evaluation of the top 10 social networking websites is greater than $10 billion. If we count the rest of the hundreds of social networking companies, it is easy to see the huge business opportunity in this area.

The group has already developed futuristic applications like Web-based video conferencing and interactive games on social networking websites. Experts in this group can help business in OpenSocial compliance and deliver OpenSocial applications.