Google is opening Orkut and allowing the use of third party applications such as games, music and widgets on the network.

Facebook did the same thing a short while back and the move seems to have boosted the sites popularity, membership and traffic.

Google is not one to sit around and not emulate the competition's successful ideas on it's social network.

Amar Gandhi, the Orkut group product manager, expects the move will boost the sites membership to over 50 million users.

Orkut was originally launched in 2004 to compete with MySpace. MySpace now accounts for roughly 80% of social media traffic.

Orkut has less than 1% of social media traffic in the US. The service is more popular in other areas of the world, such as Brazil, India, Asia and Latin American countries.

It will be interesting to see how much headway Google makes with Orkut in the US market by opening the service to outside developers.

Visit Google code and build social applications for Orkut.

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