MUMBAI, INDIA: Rediff.com, India's leading online community portal, has launched its developer program at Proto.in (http://developer.rediff.com), inviting all application developers to come on board and build applications for Rediff.com properties, which is being made compatible to support Facebook Markup Language (FBML).

The project, code-named 'Sociali', will open up a unique opportunity for application developers to reach the worldwide Rediff user-base. Rediff iShare, the videos, music and photo sharing platform is the first property of Rediff.com that is opened for application developers.

Rediff.com also announced financial grants for innovative application ideas to encourage students and application developers who may not have necessary funds and infrastructure to build the applications on their own.

Commenting on the Strategic Initiative Rediff.com's Venki Nishtala, CTO, said: "The portal architecture on the internet is under going a big change, opening up newer opportunities which can only be leveraged jointly with application developers. Our vision is to extend our platforms to external developers to build innovative and unique applications which will make Rediff.com services richer and engaging for our users."

The developers' site (http://developer.rediff.com) includes all the required documentation, sample code and developer forums to help developers to build applications for the platform easily. Developers who have innovative application ideas can logon to the developers' site and submit their ideas. Out of all the entries 10 shortlisted candidates will be given grants to bring their ideas to life.