Google: OpenSocial on Orkut is coming, we promise, pinky-swear

Google product manager Amar Gandhi announced in a blog post on Tuesday night that there have been "a couple of modifications" to the company's release of OpenSocial compatibility for its Orkut social network.

In other words, there appears to be some red tape. Instead of immediately rolling out the Orkut platform, which it was originally scheduled to do right around now, Google will be conducting a "prelaunch testing period" for select applications. That will last about four weeks.

"We apologize for delaying the launch a few weeks," Gandhi wrote. "We feel that this prelaunch testing period will ensure that users are introduced to apps in the best way possible."

Avid followers of Google's OpenSocial developer initiative have been eagerly anticipating the standard's debut on Orkut. After all, this is the closest thing to an in-house Google developer platform, and if it works well, this could help Orkut emerge as a whole lot more than "that social network that's big in Brazil and India."

For those cranky pundits already hunting for the next Facebook, Orkut has been the subject of much scrutiny.

The Social Times notes that MySpace.com's developer platform is also slated to go live next week, and it wonders whether it's still on track because it also implements OpenSocial.

I've contacted MySpace representatives for comment and will update this post when I hear back.