• User Experience: Allowing developers to design applications on top of your platform provides the ability for users to have unique experiences tailored specifically for them. From a mobile perspective there will now potentially be a thousand different versions of the same operating system each tweaked slightly so that it fits the owners needs. Furthermore it will allow people to share the coolest parts of their user experience across all networks.
• Standardization: With numerous partners involved in both OpenSocial and Android, developers have a standardized way of creating applications for users without having to worry about platform. The standard platform also helps define documentation, procedures and application sharing.
• Cost: Open platforms always tend to be far less expensive than mainstream/off the shelf products. With platforms such as Android in place, users will notice a cut in cost compared to handhelds operating systems like Windows Mobile and Palm OS.
• Innovation: Giving developers the access to such powerful and flexible platforms will encourage increased innovation as they compete to develop the next killer application.
• Support: Open Platforms (1 common base) equals Thousands of Developers which equals the amount of support available for applications and configuration that are built on top of the platform.

"Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos."

"OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community."

Original Post: Web Analytics World - Benefits of OpenSocial, Android