On Friday, Scoreloop announced its social gaming networking technology was going cross-platform with the addition of support for Android.

An extension of the infrastructure and toolset of its Core Social technology, it enables developers and publishers to integrate the same social gaming features Scoreloop already offers on iPhone for Android, allowing players of the same game to challenge each other cross-platform.

We caught up with Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger to find out more.

Pocket Gamer: So you're finally gone cross-platform?

Marc Gumpinger: Yes. The technology has been finished for some time, but we were waiting for the right opportunity to announce it. We've been talking to a couple of publishers who were interested it using it, but we decided this was the right time to go public so we can talk freely about it. I think a lot of companies are now working on iPhone and Android games.

However, I should point out that iPhone remains a huge platform for us and we're still doing everything to provide the best platform there. Our White Label approach enables publishers to integrate our technology directly into their games. Combined with the cross-platform features, they are very happy about Scoreloop.

Presumably in time, you'll be offering support for other platforms?

Android is not going to be the only one. We're already working on the next one, because we're getting requests from the big publishers. Technology that only works for iPhone isn't very interesting to them whereas a platform that offers multiple platforms is decisive. And there are some additional platforms they consider to be important.

How long does it take to add support for new platforms?

We are pretty fast actually because of our White Label approach, which offers developers and publishers access to our low level APIs. This means we can add more features quickly across more platforms because we aren't restricted by a fixed user interface.

Are you still offering your original tech for people who want social networking for iPhone out-of-the-box?

We still offer the standard SDK that has the fixed Scoreloop UI but our focus is on White Label now because the feedback we get says this is what people want.

For one thing, we have very good documentation so less experienced teams can add things like simple online high scores quickly, and they have the option to go much deeper.

Also, the Scoreloop Social Core technology enables people to be much more creative in terms of how they integrate players in their games, not just at a lowest common denominator level. You can add cool new social features that haven't been seen before because you have full access to all the features underneath the platform.

Are there any major differences between features on Android and iPhone?

On Android, we provide different payment options because it has Google Checkout and we'll be adding local payments systems and premium SMS, but feature-wise, we're as a compatible as possible.

Could you support real-time cross-platform multiplayer?

You can do real-time with Scoreloop, but we don't officially support it. We want to make sure we support multiple platforms in a compatible way, and we also want to make sure what we support works on all network connections. I am sure there are lots of people on good connections but we can't forget the people on EDGE.

Thanks to Marc for his time.

Check out the Scoreloop website, or contact partnerships [at] scoreloop.com to get more details.

Scoreloop can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.