One of the surprising developments at Proto was the announcement by Rediff (which incidentally was the platinum sponsor for the event) of its developer platform by opening up its APIs. The platform will allow developers to create an applications economy on Rediff on the lines of Facebook & Open Social. The move is laudable – it speaks of Rediff’s confidence in its own engineering prowess, though it can be argued that Rediff hardly has the social graph that is necessary for making this successful. RediffMail is likely to have the largest user base, but other services – iShare, Connexions, Rediffblogs etc have a fragmented usage pattern, something that is not best suited for social graph platforms. Below is a snap from the presentation that Rediff ‘s platform head gave at Proto.

To push the platform, the company has also announced an incentive program for application developers. Interested people can submit their ideas to the company and the best 10 entries stand to get a grant of 250K for building the app.

This move is an indication that the Indian homegrown portals are not going to allow the global biggies to eat the cake out of their hands. While they may not have the technical depth, that a Google or Facebook has, they are willing to take the battle to the middle in protecting their home turf.

So who’s next in line… Indiatimes? Sify? any takers ….

Update: Manu from TechSutra notes that Rediff has ripped their platform off Facebook completely. This is what he says- “………… Rediff has completely ripped off facebook devloper platform from naming of API to documentation. FBML becomes RBML, FQL becomes RQL. You can compare the documentation of FQL & RQL below.

Forget innovation, rediff can’t be even bothered to write their own documentation. Right now, there are no appplications which rediff has showcased. All they have is the ripped off documentation and a “get in touch” form which asks you for your application ideas. The form says “Terms and conditions” apply but no where can I find the terms and conditions. This has to be the most ridiculous and shameless platform launch ever!…..”

Read his post here.

What do you say- is it bouquets or brickbats for Rediff?