MySpace Developer Platform

MySpace Introduces Sync with Facebook

Jennifer — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:55:00 GMT

Today we're introducing Sync with Facebook, www.myspace.com/guide/sync, which allows MySpace users, musicians, and celebrities around the world to sync their status updates with their Facebook profile or Page, while also offering them the ability to share content such as game activity, music, videos, links and photos with their friends on Facebook.

Sync with Facebook allows users to keep their friends on Facebook up to date on everything, including: sharing songs, latest photos, fun game apps, and more.

So, when a user adds a game on MySpace, it will now be broadcast to that users' Facebook friends in their Facebook stream. Users who click on the stream activity within Facebook are taken to the game's profile page on MySpace so that logged in and non-logged in users can see the content. At launch we are syncing game install activity, but are working to sync more gaming related activities with the Facebook stream.

The opportunities to experience and share this type of entertainment content are endless. This is particularly exciting for artists who can now use this tool as a complement to their MySpace Music presence and share their vast library of content, including full album catalogs, to people who've liked their Facebook Page.

Here are a few screenshots of how the sync functionality will look:

And here's an example of what a MySpace game activity will look like on Facebook.

Syncing with Facebook is easy to set up:

Click on the settings box in the update module on your Home page
Check the box next to Facebook or Twitter (or both!)
Follow the steps prompted to sync your accounts
Done! Your updates will now automatically sync.

Users continue to have the option to sync to Twitter as well. Once you've synced your Facebook account, simply update your status on MySpace as you normally would (from your Home page, Status and Mood page, or mobile phone). When you update your status on MySpace, it will then be shared with friends on Facebook.

This new sync functionality is part of an ongoing effort to make it simple for people to share their updates beyond MySpace and allow fans and friends to interact with that content across the web.

As always, let us know what you think.

Jen Ruffner

Director of Product, Stream

Searching for Games Just Got Easier

Bill — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:29:00 GMT

We've recently made some changes to our global search product to allow users to discover games more easily. Our current search product is tabbed by content vertical, so users can search for something within Music or Video. We have now added a Games tab to search, so users can more easily find the games they're looking for. We have also included an auto-complete feature that suggests content for users, further making it easy to find the content you want. We hope that the new Games search contributes to more of our users discovering fun, new games.

Several months ago we evaluated our internal search product and realized that if we were going to deliver a better search experience, it was necessary to revamp how we implemented search, end to end - creating an extensible platform for ingesting search data (in this case, information about each game), all the way to a brand new, fast, consistent, modern, user experience supporting both .NET and non-.NET platforms. During the process we even switched from .NET to Java! Our first step on this long "search in a box" journey is complete, and it's a big milestone for us and for Games. We're looking forward to making even more enhancements to the search experience, improving the visibility and discoverability of great content.

Note the difference!

New search experience for ‘mobsters'

Old search experience for ‘mobsters'

- Bill Bliss, VP & GM of Search and Recommendations

App Testing on the User Homepage and Profile Surfaces

manu — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:47:00 GMT

Over the past few days we have been testing different options for the amount of apps a user can display on their homepage (UHP) and profile. Due to this testing, some of your apps may be affected and may not show on the UHP or profile for some users. We are constantly testing different ways to optimize the user experience, and we will continue to test options for limiting and smartly surfacing apps that are displayed on a users' homepage and profile.

We believe smartly rendering apps that have great UHP and profile surfaces could help us optimize page load time and also reward those apps that are utilizing these surfaces appropriately. Our goal is to ensure we have the best user experience possible, and we find that users are more engaged with apps if these surfaces look good and add value.

The UHP and profile app surfaces allow users to easily access an app, express their interests, and showcase their store, pet, or avatar to friends. They are a key channel for many apps to acquire new users and re-engage with existing app users. Some developers find that 60% of new users and 45% of repeat users come from these surfaces! We've also found that once an app includes dynamic content within the surface, it receives 10-30% more page views as well as increased engagement within the app. Clearly these surfaces are an important source of traffic to apps, so you should be paying attention to them.

Over the course of the next several months, we will be reviewing the UHP and profile surfaces of many apps to determine if they are using them appropriately. Our goal is to reward those apps that are optimizing this prime real estate. We highly encourage you to refine and work on these surfaces if you haven't already. Or, if you're not taking advantage of them, now's the chance to get started!

Here are a few tips for making these UHP and profile surfaces more effective and fun.

Appropriate size. With our new user profile layout, there is a two column format so surfaces should optimize width to fit both formats. The surface should either auto-resize or optimize for a 280px width and have the image also be able to work in a 480px width column. The small column on the new user profile layout is 280px in width and the large column is 480px. The height should be 250px. This sizing should be the same for the UHP surface.
No hidden content or dead space. You shouldn't make a user scroll to see content in the surface or have lots of unused space.
Dynamic content. Show relevant content that reflects what is happening in the game. For instance, the level you're on, your avatar, or notifications No more static ads, you should want to add value to your users with these surfaces.
Fast Page Load. The surfaces should load quickly (suggested time should be less than 2 seconds) and not negatively impact our overall page load time.

In the example below, the game Happy Aquarium is showing dynamic content from the game by displaying what level the user is on as well as hunger and cleanliness levels. In the profile surface, the user can show off what their fish tank looks like to everyone. The surfaces look good and create value, good job Happy Aquarium!

Example: User homepage module

Example: User profile module

MySpace Previews New User Homepage With Two Column Stream

Christina — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:04:00 GMT

Starting this week, users have the option to preview our new user homepage. The new user homepage prominently displays the activity stream and makes sharing and discovering new content easier than ever.

As users log-in to MySpace, there is a prompt to opt-in for an early look at the new homepage. The homepage will be rolled out and formally launched to all users next week. New features include:

A wider activity stream: The stream now spans the first two columns, featuring shared content and status updates from friends across your network. With this new design, we're placing more of an emphasis on all of our great content by really making it pop from the moment you sign-in.
My Stuff and Recommendations: The new "My Stuff" module gives you quick access to games, photos, videos and music right from the homepage. Similarly, all recommendations (Games You Should Play, Featured Games, People You May Know, and Recommended Events) have been combined into one simplified "Recommendations" module. The new "My Stuff" module will replace the "My Apps" module that was on the old homepage. We hope with more navigation to games in a clear format with the new user homepage, it will make it easier for users to find the games they love.
New alerts system and address book importer: The new alerts system collects similar alerts and repositions them in a more visible and persistent location, enabling users to browse and interact with their alerts without ever leaving the UHP. All app requests and notifications will be presented in this module. A new version of the address book importer will help users find and connect with friends more easily.

Check out the new user homepage:

This is the first of a series of changes to the UHP that you'll see in the coming months. We look forward to rolling out products that will further improve the ability to quickly and easily surface content that matches your interests.

To learn more, check out our page with details on how to upgrade and let us know what you think.

Updates on Daily Limits for App Invites

Jamie — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:59:00 GMT

Hello pirates, ninjas, and developers... just a quick update on our efforts to limit (throttle) the number of invites a user can send via an app per day. In the original blog post, we communicated the plan was to initially limit invites that can be sent to 100 per day per user per app; and then further reduce the limit down to 40. Those changes have gone into effect (July 14th), and we have been analyzing the results.

We have confirmed this mechanism to be effective in preventing an excessive amount of invites sent by users. And, as a result, the invites conversion percentage has gone up. We are continuing to optimize this viral channel to maximize the number of invites converted into active app users. This week we set the daily limit for invites to 60 and are measuring the resulting impact. This value was chosen to provide additional headroom for this viral channel. We anticipate this limit value will be set indefinitely, and recommend all app developers to implement the sending of invites considering this limit value.

For more info on invites, check out the Invites Wiki Page.

New Canvas Ad Unit

Hatch — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:31:00 GMT

Today we began testing the location of two new ad units on the App Canvas page (the game play surface). Since the units appear in the gutters of App Canvas pages (the game play surface area), they will not affect the current size of the Canvas page. The goal of these new ad units is to help developers increase awareness and conversions of their game or app without negatively impacting engagement time per game. We want to encourage the discoverability of new games to our users, and because the test ads appear only to users who have added a game, they are inherently targeted to those users most likely to play games on MySpace.

Let us know what you think and if you’re interested in testing out this new ad unit with us, email me jhatcher@myspace-inc.com.

Showing 1.0 Apps on Profile

Chris Cole — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:58:00 GMT

We've been getting occassional reports of apps written in 1.0 not showing when they correctly specify a content block for the profile surface.

ex:

<Content type="html" view="profile">
...
</Content>

While we've solved most of the issues, developers are still reporting occassional problems. The sure way to solve this problem is to use the super-secret, undocumented (until now) extension to force recognition of a view. This is done by adding the MySpace-Views feature block to the ModulePrefs section. In this block you can specify the anchor location for your profile view (left or right), as well as initial sizing on all views.

<Module>
  <ModulePrefs title="MySpace specific app settings" 
    <Optional feature="MySpace-Views">
      <Param name="profilesize">300</Param>
      <Param name="profilelocation">right</Param>
      <Param name="canvassize">100,1500</Param>
      <Param name="homesize">250</Param>
    </Optional>
  </ModulePrefs>

...
</Module

When the MySpace-Views feature is found in the gadget and a profilesize and profilelocation are specified, you force the gadget to recognize that it has a profile view.

Valid values for profilelocation: left | right
Valid values for profilesize: width,height | height

Apps Shortcut Added to the WebIM Bar

Nikita — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:52:00 GMT

We are continuing to add new ways for users to engage with their Apps and Games on MySpace. Today we have added a shortcut to users’ Apps from the WebIM bar. All users by default have access to the WebIM bar, and it persistent at the bottom of their screen while logged into MySpace. A small icon for the last three Apps the user has played appears, with an arrow that when clicked on displays all the Apps a user has added. The goal of adding the Apps shortcut is to enable quick access to users’ Apps and Games from wherever they are within MySpace.

We hope this new, persistent engagement channel helps users easily play the Games they love. We’ll be keeping an eye on engagement levels within Apps to see how it performs, but keep us posted what you think and if your metrics are impacted.

New Games filter in the Stream

Benson — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:43:00 GMT

We wanted to make you aware of some Game and App testing we’re doing in the Stream starting today. We’ve added Games filters so users can sort through the Stream based on the content they want to see. So, users that just want to see posts related to Games can easily sort through the Stream to see those posts. Since most of our Apps are actually Games (‘Games’ is a subset of Apps), we are testing having one filter for both or having separate Games and Apps filters. The goal of these tests is to determine if the filters help with clicks on stream posts. It’s also an easy way for users to find the content they want and discover new games. Let us know what you think and how this effects your conversions.

Planned Maintenance Affecting Apps on 6.15.2010

Dave Peck — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:40:00 GMT

A quick heads up that we have some planned network maintenance scheduled for tomorrow morning, June 15th. The maintenance window is from 7:00AM - 10:00AM (PST). We have scheduled it in the morning to minimize disruption. The impact during this window will be the following:

Users will not be able to add new applications (users will still be able to play apps they’ve already added.

Users will not be able to uninstall applications

Users will not be able to change application settings

Users will not be able to connect new accounts to MySpaceID-enabled sites (if an account is connected already it will work fine)

Developers won’t be able to manage their applications

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience.

Tips for More Effective Notifications

CodeStorm — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:58:00 GMT

Hopefully, most of you are taking advantage of our App Notifications feature. Anecdotally we hear that app notifications contribute to over 20% of traffic for games on MySpace, so if you’re not using this viral channel you’re missing out! Are your notifications driving as much user engagement as you had hoped?

Check out our new wiki document, App Notifications Best Practices for some tips on making the most of notifications.

Some ideas include:

Always have the notification add some value for the player in your game. Reward the user in some way, such as giving out an item for free for responding to the notification.

Or, show them something personalized from their progress in the game that would draw the user’s interest and encourage a visit to the game.

Avoid sending generic notifications that have no more value than an advertisement.

Check out the full document here:

http://developerwiki.myspace.com/index.php?title=App_Notifications_Best_Practices

MySpace Launches Developer Services Program

manu — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:10:00 GMT

MySpace has some impressive partners that share our vision to provide tools and resources to help developers build engaging, fun, and profitable integrations with MySpace. Today, we're announcing the Developer Services program that will provide developers with discounts and promotions on services to make it easier to get started building on our platform.

From hosting to business software, here are some of the companies offering unique services for developers to check out:

Joyent is providing MySpace developers one year of free hosting and computing resources on the Joyent Cloud. This can help developers focus on creating the next killer app instead of dealing with infrastructure and scalability issues. The MySpace optimized Joyent SmartMachine has been configured to make it fast and easy to develop and deploy your MySpace applications. Details are available at: http://www.joyent.com/myspace.

PlaySpan, a leader in monetization solutions for social games, is offering MySpace game developers an exclusive, limited-time promotion on their services. Developers can increase revenue by implementing PlaySpan's Spare Change micro-payments system, and if you sign up for Spare Change now, you can save 20 percent on transaction fees during your first 3 months. Enter the coupon code: MakeMoney99 to qualify for the special limited-time promotion exclusively for MySpace developers. Sign up here: http://www.sparechangeinc.com/myspace.

ClickandBuy is offering MySpace developers a way to process worldwide international digital payments through a free merchant account to help monetize and create a business from their applications. ClickandBuy's exclusive deal for MySpace developers include no registration fee, no monthly fee and no fixed costs. MySpace developers can self-register and qualify for a ClickandBuy Merchant Account online at http://www.clickandbuy.com/US_en/myspace.html.

Scoreloop is enabling mobile game developers to link their games directly to the MySpace network via the Scoreloop Core Social SDK for both Android and iPhone. This helps your users find other MySpace friends also playing the game, compete and compare highest scores, share game session progress, send player challenges and invite others to play the game. Along with these features, Scoreloop is running a contest where 10 of the best iPhone / Android social game integrations with MySpace support will receive 1 million free ad impressions through the MySpace App. This promotion ends June 30th, and all developers of live games with MySpace integration by this date will be entered into the competition! Get started at: http://www.scoreloop.com/myspace.

Microsoft BizSpark is making it easy for start-ups to get instant access to Microsoft technology and support. Qualified companies will have simplified enrollment into the Microsoft BizSpark Program. Developers should choose MySpace as a Network Partner at signup; http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark.

Social Gold is a leading global virtual goods monetization platform that allows developers to optimize their virtual economy and increase conversion. Starting June 1, 2010, all developers who use Social Gold to process payments on MySpace are eligible for a 20% rebate on transactions processed. Promotion ends August 31, 2010. Get started at http://getsocialgold.com/myspace.

These promotions will be posted on our website but we'll be updating the page so be sure to check back often HERE. Also, let us know if your company is interested in extending a discount on your service to MySpace developers. Drop us a note at DeveloperServices@myspace-inc.com.

MySpace Real-Time Stream Enhancements

Mr. Roby — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:50:00 GMT

As a part of our efforts to offer developers public real-time data to enhance their applications, we’ve added song and video plays to our Real-Time Stream. These are based on the Activity Stream spec. The song plays include metadata about the artist and song, including song name and link, duration, artist and artist URL, album and album thumbnail. The video data includes title/description, a thumbnail, link, duration, and author. Developers could use this new data in the stream to build a real-time trend analysis on all popular songs or videos being played at any given moment. Also, it can also give a pulse of what artists are hot at that second.

Since we launched our Real-Time Stream API, we’ve seen many companies, like Collecta, using it to enhance their site. Our RTS pushes out rich data the moment it has been published, with public and private channels that respect users’ privacy. To view our full privacy policy, visit it here.

Check out the Real-Time Stream Overview to get started pushing the stream to your site.

MySpace Welcomes Social Gaming Developers

Michael — Fri, 21 May 2010 17:52:00 GMT

As I discussed at GDC in March, we are focused on enhancing our social gaming platform and are deeply committed to helping developers of all sizes increase visibility for their games on MySpace. Today, we’re excited to introduce the MySpace Games Lab pilot program, which is dedicated to bringing third party developers into our offices to drive collaboration and facilitate great user experiences. Partners including TheBroth and Meez were early participants, and now we’re inviting others to join as well.

Partnering with our developers is key and opening the platform allows MySpace and its users to benefit from the creativity of the developer community. We’ve also been working with Playdom to incorporate their feedback and refine our product roadmap priorities.

“Working closely with MySpace has allowed us to launch and extend successful titles like Mobsters and Sorority Life,” said John Pleasants, chief executive officer of Playdom. “As we continue to collaborate, MySpace has been receptive to our feedback to update the platform with improved promotional and viral channels. Our symbiotic partnership ensures that our shared users will continue to enjoy unique social gaming experiences.”

In addition to this news, we also want to share the latest updates from some of our game developer partners. Zynga continues to recognize the value of the MySpace platform and is extending the popular Mafia Wars title by allowing MySpace users to unlock the Bangkok chapter of the game. As one of the most popular social gaming developers, we’re excited to offer their games to the avid social gamers on MySpace.

“Social gaming is a powerful way for people to connect with each other,” said Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Zynga. “As we extend our titles to different places on the Web, MySpace provides an audience of social gamers that engage frequently with games and are excited to discover and share those experiences with others.”

Another nod to the growth of social gaming in general, support for Open Social is on the rise. As you may haveseen, MySpace implemented OpenSocial 1.0 and is eager to educate the developer audience on how to use it. Sean Ryan, the chairman of virtual world service Meez, recently wrote a guest column for Inside Social Games explaining why he believes the Open Social standard is due for big growth this year. He also highlighted recent success in working with MySpace to increase Meez’s user base to almost 500,000 active users after six weeks on MySpace.

Separately, Lalit Sarna, CEO of Oxylabs, who was an early adopter of the OpenSocial standard, has launched five applications on MySpace in the past year. Ranging from fun apps like PhotoBuzz to social games like Mafia Resurrection, each of the apps have monetized well. Just ask Sarna:

“MySpace offers the largest OpenSocial user-base and gamers on the site are really excited to experiment and discover new social games” said Sarna. “The entire OpenSocial community offers a lot of support and MySpace has been a great partner as our company has grown from a small to mid-sized development house.”

We’re also building the right team to spearhead the evolution of MySpace Games. You may have noticed the recent introduction of new leadership to the MySpace team with the addition of Manu Rekhi who is the new General Manager of MySpace Games and Developer Platform.

We’d like to start a conversation to see how MySpace can support your games. Contact our platform team at PartnerRelations@myspace-inc.com.

-Mike

MySpace Launches New SDK for Android, Apple

Bjorn — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:18:00 GMT

By Bjorn Laurin, GM and VP, MySpace Mobile

At MySpace, we’re committed to offering developers the building blocks and resources to create engaging apps and social games. Today, the company is announcing a new SDK for developers to integrate MySpace into mobile applications. The SDK makes it easy for developers to engage MySpace users who like to discover and share content on the go.

MySpace Users Are Inherently Mobile
Our core users are highly engaged in mobile. They regularly interact with the site with mobile devices and are increasingly doing so via the Android platform with mobile Web page views increasing by 230 percent in the last 12 months. Since launch, MySpace has ranked as one of the top 10 most popular apps in the Android App Market. As another indicator of our mobile engagement, more than 30 percent of all MySpace traffic comes from a mobile device.

Incorporate MySpace In Your App
The MySpace platform and our users really benefit from the creativity of the developer audience. To empower developers to incorporate MySpace into mobile apps, the SDK includes:

Login: Gives developers an integrated login UI allowing users to login to MySpace without leaving the app. The SDK will provide the UI components and integration points for app developers to invoke login and ask for required permissions.
Update Status: Send status and mood updates to the current user's profile. This will simplify the status update process for app developers to send a simple message to update their status and choose a new mood. If available, geo tags can be sent with the status update as well.
Get Friends: Returns a list of friends for the current user. This will provide an array of standard user data for each friend (name, profile picture).
Upload Photo/Video: Uploads a photo that is on the device to the current user's photo album or videos on their profile.

Tell Us What You Think
The Android SDK is available here (http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Category:MySpaceID_SDK) and the SDK for Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will be posted on Monday, May 24. MySpace will be supporting and frequently updating the SDK based on developer and user feedback, so please let us know what you think as you start working with the SDK.

If you’re at Google I/O, come see us in the developer sandbox or check out our developer center for more information: http://developer.myspace.com.

-Bjorn

Planned Changes for Daily Limiting of App Invites

Joel — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:44:00 GMT

The ability to trigger and send invites to a user's friends is considered the most valuable viral channel for apps/games. In order to preserve the value of this mechanism and encourage authentic growth for apps, MySpace will soon be implementing daily limits for sending invites. The purpose of these daily limits is to prevent users from sending an excessive number of invites to their friends, so this channel does not become too cluttered.

We plan to implement the daily invite limits in two phases:
· On May 20th, each user will be limited to sending 100 invites to friends per day per app. The intent of the initial phase is to start daily limiting with a relatively high threshold in order to confirm functionality of the backend "throttling" system.

· On June 3rd, the daily limit will be reduced to 40 invites per sender per day per app. We'll continue to monitor this channel and see how these limits impact organic viral growth.

Subsequent posts will confirm when these changes go into effect.

For more information on invites, check out the wiki page here, http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=App_Invites.

MySpace continues to develop new functionality and evolve app invites. For example, app parameters were recently added to invites. This is a convenient way track and test variations in invites content (A/B testing), and also start players in a specific place in the game. Take a look at our recent blog post for more information.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them to DeveloperRelations@MySpace-inc.com.

Scoreloop Adds MySpace to their Core Social SDK

Joel — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:49:00 GMT

We have teamed up with Scoreloop, the worldʼs leading enabler of mobile social gaming, in order to allow game developers to fully exploit social networking in their own game development. Scoreloop allows developers to drive game discovery and increase engagement with global highscores, player challenges, achievements and much more. The partnership with MySpace lets players login to MySpace directly from your games, after which they have complete access to their friends and social network. This means that not only can friends connect, compete or cooperate, and interact directly within games, but all of this in-game activity can be fed back to their MySpace pages. The great thing is that we've made it easy to incorporate these features into your game by managing the hard stuff for you.

Scoreloop has deep roots in providing high volume secure server-side technologies. As a game developer using the MySpace Mobile API you have direct access to this expertise, meaning that you wonʼt have to worry about anything server-side. This
includes registering and authenticating users and devices, uploading and sorting scores, directing challenges, and managing user accounts. Communicating with MySpace, authenticating login details, and accessing players individual social networks
are all dealt with behind the scenes. This is meant to leave you, the game developer, free to concentrate on making the best
games out there.

The MySpace Mobile API is bundled with the Scoreloop Core Social SDK so that developers can start taking advantage of both right away. Complete API documentation, as well as reference code and a demo application are provided to bring you quickly up to speed on how it all fits together. In addition you will also get access to a Scoreloop developer account, where you can manage game settings pre-launch and track usage after your game is live. And last but not least, you will also have access to integration support and best-practices consultation on how to leverage your gameʼs new social features. The APIs are written in Java (for Android) and Objective-C (for iPhone OS) so knowledge of these languages will be helpful, as will having a high-level overview of client-server programming. It is also expected that you will have a good knowledge of the platform for which you are developing.

The first step is to get your hands on the MySpace Mobile API, which is made available as part of the Scoreloop Core Social SDK for both Android and iPhone. Head over to www.scoreloop.com/myspace and fill out the sign-up form, or email myspacesdk@scoreloop.com to get started today. Youʼll be provided with a link to download the API, as well as Scoreloop developer account to get up and running.

OpenSocial State of the Union Summit on May 18th

Chris Cole — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:31:00 GMT

This has been an amazing year for OpenSocial. The spec group hammered out the full release 1.0 version of the OpenSocial specification, we cleaned up the APIs, and added a templating system. MySpace launched a major revision of the open platform with our support for the 1.0 specification as well.

All this makes it high time we had a celebration to reconnect and reflect on our achievements as a community, have some drinks, and start planning the next version of OpenSocial. To that end, you're all invited to join us for the OpenSocial State of the Union event being held on May 18th at the San Francisco MySpace offices. Registration is free and food, drinks, and t-shirts will be provided. If you're attending Google I/O the next day, this makes a great warm-up event that will give you a deep dive on what's new in Social Networking and an opportunity to talk face-to-face with the various members of the OpenSocial community and make your voice heard. Hope to see you there!

External Content Rendering with OSML

Chris Cole — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:40:00 GMT

Now that we've launched OpenSocial 1.0, we're here to help educate all you developers with how to use it.

One of the most common patterns we see among app developers is HTML fragment loading from an external site. There's a new wiki page outlining how to perform this with OSML in depth.

http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=External_Rendered_Content_with_OSML

The short summary is that OSML on MySpace utilizes two tags for rendering external content

<osx:Get src="http://example.com/mypage.html" /> 

<osx:RenderRequest src="http://example.com/otherSite.do" authz="SIGNED" />

Both of these tags will fetch the external content and display it inline. osx:Get is a good option if your needs are simple.The osx:RenderRequest tag exposes all the options available with a gadgets.io.makeRequest call, including OAuth signing, without all the messy coding overhead. The above wiki article discusses them in more depth and provides full gadget sample code.

If your needs are data-related, the os:HttpRequest tag is your friend. It's mostly tuned towards loading JSON data, but can be used for XML and markup as well.

<os:HttpRequest href="http://example.com/services/${viewer.id}/userdata.js" key="myudata" />

The result is placed in the client-side DataContext under the specified key and must be accessed with code. We'll post on this tag in more depth next week.

Some Changes to the Myspace User Home Page

Joel — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:46:00 GMT

Starting Thursday, April 15th, Myspace will be changing the way apps display on the user home page. We will be piloting this new format for a week, and we would love your feedback. Our goal is to achieve a more efficient use of space on this page by removing the applications from the right hand side. Furthermore, this should also significantly increase both performance as well as user interaction. This test will only affect 10% of the users who hit this page, and will not affect how app canvas or profile pages are displayed.

OpenSocial 1.0 with OSML Released on MySpace

Chris Cole — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:04:00 GMT

OpenSocial 1.0 is now live on the MySpace Developer Platform! Lots of hard work in the public OpenSocial specification group, along with incorporating feedback from developers like you have gotten us to this exciting milestone. OpenSocial 1.0 aids you, the developer, in many ways:

Provides a simplified development model with lower barriers to adoption
Faster app rendering times and server-side access to data through the OpenSocial Expression Language
Internationalization and localization support built-in with message bundles
Powerful template system for defining reusable custom tags
Single source management for all your app views
Improved cross-container support

This simplified development model is going to reduce the amount of time you spend learning byzantine JavaScript APIs so you can focus more of your time on the meat of what makes your app unique and compelling.

Starting today the OpenSocial Gadget XML format will be the default format for creating new applications. You can read more about Gadget XML format and work through some tutorials from the OpenSocial Wiki Page

Below is a simple hello world sample to give you a taste of authoring apps in Gadget XML format.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Module xmlns:os="http://ns.opensocial.org/2008/markup" >
  <ModulePrefs title="Hello World" description="This is the desc">
    <Require feature="opensocial-1.0"/>
    <Require feature="opensocial-templates"/>
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html" view="canvas">
    <script type="text/os-data">
     <os:ViewerRequest key='vwr' />
    </script>
    <script type="text/os-template">
     <h1>Hello world, ${vwr.displayName}</h1>
  </script>
 </Content>
</Module>

If you're not ready to jump to using Gadget XML for building your apps or are building External IFrame apps, you can still use the older editing tools by clicking on the Legacy 0.8 App Editor/External IFrame Apps button from the Edit Gadget Source page. Any existing apps you have built with the surface editors and using OpenSocial 0.8 will still use the older editors.

For the very curious, you can read all about the public OpenSocial 1.0 specification release over at OpenSocial.org, and even get involved and start giving back to the community.

OpenSocial 1.0 Specification Release Announcement

Happy coding!

MySpace Developer Analytics API Launched

Owyn — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:40:00 GMT

Hey folks,

I'm happy to say that we've published our Developer Analytics APIs for general consumption. This set of APIs allows you as developers to ingest statistical data about your application to help you better understand how your application is performing in the MySpace ecosystem.

This new API provides information about all sorts of data points, including key metrics such as impressions, installs and notification clicks. You'll also get access to valuable demographic information, being able to get data segmented by user information such as age range, gender, and geo-location, among other things.

We've also built out a little sample application to give examples of how to properly format a REST request, and how to effectively transform the output to various Google charts for charting the data. The application transforms the data into annotated line graphs, spark graphs bar graphs, pie charts and geo maps.

We're glad that we can begin providing developers with direct access to the information they need to ensure their game or application performs well on our platform!

To get started, check out the documentation, found at: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Category:Developer_Analytics

Custom app params are now available on app invites.

CodeStorm — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:07:00 GMT

We've added the ability to add your own custom tracking parameters to app invites. You can use parameters to track in many different ways; you see which user sent the invite, automatically start a new user at a certaint point in a game, conduct A/B testing around the invite itself or use any other contextual information you wish.

In the requestShareApp call, simply pass your own object as the fourth parameter, opt_params. When a user adds an app from an invite, and is redirected to the canvas page, the custom params can be read using gadgets.views.getParams().<your key here>.

Here's a sample snippet of code:

var casino = gadgets.views.getParams().casino; 
var table = gadgets.views.getParams().table;

var friendId = '6221';
inviteParams = {"casino":"Sun Monte Carlo","table":"blackjack123"};
var reason = opensocial.newMessage('hi [recipient], join [sender] in the casino game [app]');

var navParams = opensocial.newNavigationParameters();

navParams.setField(opensocial.NavigationParameters.Field.PARAMETERS, inviteParams);
navParams.setField('destinationType',opensocial.NavigationParameters.DestinationType.RECIPIENT_DESTINATION);

opensocial.requestShareApp(friendId, reason, null, navParams);

See the App Invite wiki for more details and sample code: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=App_Invites#Including_custom_parameters

Let us know what you think about the implementation and if you have any additional suggestions. Expect more key improvements rolling out soon!

MySpace Enhances Game Development & Game Discovery

Benson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:11:00 GMT

We’d like to share with you today enhancements we’ve made to the MySpace platform that will increase the discoverability and virality of games on our site. These changes were made to help users better find and experience games on MySpace and also empower developers with tools for better tracking and monetizing their applications.

New MySpace Games gallery

The new MySpace Games gallery is now live at www.myspace.com/games. This is the first of many discovery and viral channel improvements for users to discover the thousands of games that developers have built on the platform.

The new user experience includes:

Games Notifications & Friends’ Activity – The new Games gallery will be a one-stop shop for discovering new games through friends’ Games installs and activities, and also for responding to Notifications and Invites. Optimizing Notifications and Invites are now as important as ever.
Personalized recommendations – the new ‘Suggestions’ module recommends to users Games based on what they are currently playing, and also what their friends play.
Ratings – Users now have the ability to rate Games from the My Apps page, and this in turn will affect the order of search results and enhance recommendations to users.

We’re also excited to have worked with so many great developers to deliver a number of new games to our users, including Fish Isle, Hoop Fever Live, Kingdoms of Camelot, Paradise Paintball, SPP Ranch, Warlords, Wild Ones, and Zombie Revenge.

Analytics API

Developers will be given API-level access to data collected for their applications to help them get better insights on the usage of their applications, conversion success of the viral channels and API usage. This will allow them to track campaign success, identify ways to improve ROI, as well as manage their application performance.

Groovy, Unity 3D, dimeRocker, and Scoreloop provide support for enhanced game development on MySpace

We have many valuable partners who are supporting our platform to ensure game developers are able to build and monetize games on MySpace. Developers can now use GroovyCortex, which is a cloud-based solution for onsite application developers, to provide low latency push data for multiplayer games.

Using the Unity 3D platform, developers can also now build games in rich, 3D-like quality with Unity's powerful 3D engine and allow MySpace users to access the games with a new plug-in. See the game Paradise Paintball as an example. Unity game developers are now able to work with dimeRocker to help deploy, monetize, and grow traffic for their 3D browser games on MySpace.

Social features/functionality are an imperative – not just a choice – for game developers and publishers. And Scoreloop is helping developers make sure games have social as part of their DNA to provide enhanced experiences, drive discovery and community and overall create more interactivity and fun! Scoreloop helps developers encourage cross-platform competition allowing games on MySpace and other platforms to share the same high scores, achievements, challenges and buddy lists.

The Professional Social Networking Client Hootsuite Adds MySpace

beriberikix — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:58:00 GMT

Social Networks aren't just for users like you and me; major companies and brands rely on services like MySpace to engage with their customers and acquire actionable feedback. In order to take advantage of these networks, companies need tools to take in and make sense of all the input.

Today Hootsuite, the professional social networking client popular with brands for its ability to send updates across multiple networks, launched their integration with MySpace using MySpaceID. The new integration allows Hootsuite users to sync updates across multiple networks, including their MySpace account. From there, users can see their MySpace friends' statuses and even set a status to be updated in the future, a key utility for brands with a lot upcoming updates.

Here are some screenshots of the new integration:

Hootsuite is proving to be a powerful tool for brands leveraging social networks to engage with an increasingly broad audience, and today’s MySpaceID implementation extends this reach to our highly engaged community. Notably, the new MySpace integration is available for all Hootsuite users, not just companies and brands - so go over to Hootsuite, right now to check it out live!

Cheers,

./BBK