by Kimberly Munsey-Carlton

Created on: January 08, 2011   Last Updated: January 09, 2011

Launched less than two years ago and already hosting 35 million players, social platform OpenFeint was originally only used by Apple’s iOS but has recently became available for Google’s Android operating system. In the third quarter of 2010 there were 20 million Android devices sold, compared to 13.4 million iOS devices and OpenFeint developer Aurora Feint, a company named after the video game of the same name, realized the high audience demand for it to be a functional part of the Android experience.

OpenFeint’s appeal is that with minimal added programming it allows developers to easily add social networking aspects into their games. Users can view leaderboards, participate in forums and live chat sessions, add friends, check on what their friends are playing, and much more. iPhones make OpenFeint an optional 'layer' to be added on top of the actual game and with most iPhones, OpenFeint enabled games have the option of including a badge on the corner of the game's icon and also allow developers to promote their other OpenFeint games to the user.

Along with a new interface and customizable features, OpenFeint’s Version 2.1 brought with it "Social challenges". Social challenges allowed users to create tasks for themselves and their network of friends to confront within games on their iPhones. iPhone's feature, called the Push Notification app, notifies users whenever a new challenge is available for gameplay.

With OpenFeint 2.6, players are now able to send SMS (text messages) and e-mail to contacts on their phone’s list. Aurora Feint has even taken steps to ward off spammers. With almost 200,000 phones signing on a day, one complaint from gamers was the difficulty they met when inviting a friend to use OpenFeint who is using a different mobile platform than them. That is no longer a problem and OpenFeint has widened the social gaming network playground and insured cross platform use. In other words, iPhone users can invite Android users and vice versa.

Game Center currently has over 2600 games with thousands of games coming on the market every year, making it opportune for Aurora Feint to use their out-of-network invite system to shout out game endorsements. This cycle highlights and promotes the best games out there, reviewed and promoted by their own users.

OpenFeint allows iPhone, iPad and iPod users to:

Earn rewards and unlock achievements by playing games Beat the best and see how you stack up on global leaderboards compared to other gamers. User can then challenge the leaders and beat the highest scorers at their own game. Play with friends and make new connections with other players who love the games you do. User can invite friends from Facebook, Twitter, and their address book Build your own profile and define your gamer identity

OpenFeint allows Android users to:

Earn rewards and unlock achievements by playing games Beat the best and see how you stack up on global leaderboards compared to other gamers Play with friends and make new connections with other players who love the games you do

http://openfeint.com/

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