March 27th, 2008

Microsoft Partners with Social Networks on Data Portability

This week Microsoft made data portability news by announcing a partnership with five of largest social networks to allow users to export their contacts from Windows Live directly into those services. Partner networks include Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5 and Tagged (the Facebook export works now, with the others coming soon). Underneath the covers the integration is based on the Windows Live Contacts API and in conjunction with the announcement Microsoft has launched www.invite2messenger.net where users can invite friends from partner social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

The stated objective is to create a “secure two-way street” in which users control how and when their data is shared:

We think customers should be able to share their data in the most safe and secure way possible, but historically this openness has been achieved largely through a mechanism called “screen-scraping,” which unduly puts customers at risk for phishing attacks, identity fraud, and spam. Now with the Windows Live Contacts API, we have provided an alternative to “screen-scraping” that is equally open but unequivocally safer and more secure for customers.

Certainly screen scraping is an anti-pattern that’s gotten a lot of attention recently. And it’s become such a common way for sites to access users’ contacts that it’s created a good business for companies who provide address book scraping libraries like Octazen Solutions.

Moves like this from Microsoft and Google’s recently launched Contacts API are solid steps along the path to interoperability of social network data. For more lively discussion on this topic there’s the upcoming Data Sharing Summit and Workshop on April 18-19th in SF and Mountain View on May 15th.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Microsoft, Social, Standards at 12:22 AM | No Comments »

February 7th, 2008

Scale Facebook Apps With Amazon Services

Amazon and Facebook have clearly been on the leading edge of two forces driving the web as platform - cloud computing and exploitation of the social graph. Now these two companies have announced a partnership that lets Facebook developers leverage both innovations by giving developers a path to employ the Amazon cloud computing model based on the EC2 and S3 APIs. This has the ability to provide an infrastructure for developers who dream of building a wildly viral Facebook application and worry about how to handle the growth.

Amazon’s EC2 provides the metered compute capacity for creating virtual instances, and S3 the storage component. The partnership with Facebook doesn’t extend either of their respective APIs, but it offers a a set of resources including a step-by-step process to launch a Facebook app using the Amazon platform.

Facebook developers had already one solid option with one-year-free hosting from Joyent which partnered with Facebook in December and it’s likely we’ll see a variety of such app infrastructure services appearing in the next few months.

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Posted by John Musser as Amazon, Facebook, Infrastructure, Social at 1:48 AM | No Comments »

February 4th, 2008

Upcoming Events and Conferences

In the next two months there are a number of notable conferences and events that should be of interest to folks in this space. As platforms and APIs become continue to grow we’re seeing more conferences dedicated to them (like Mashup Camp and Graphing Social Patterns) or industry-specific events with API and mashup-related sessions and tracks (like VON and eComm2008).

• At the end of this month is the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) in Miami for three days starting on the 28th. Checking the schedule you can see the lineup includes a number of platform-related talks including Google’s Kevin Marks on the Future of APIs and Leah Culver on the Future of Web Services. The workshops also look interesting including one on OpenSocial from Plaxo’s Joesph Smarr. ProgrammableWeb readers can get 15% off the price of either a one-day or conference and workshop ticket using the code ‘PWEBM08′.
• A pair of popular O’Reilly conferences are happening in San Diego the first week of March: Graphing Social Patterns West (aka GSP West) and the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. GSP West has two days worth of interesting speakers and tracks that cover both the business side and technology sides of social network platforms. In parallel is ETech, with one of the most diverse agendas of any tech conference with topics ranging from using web services to build databases in the cloud, to genomics hacking, to DIY survival, to iPhone hacking. O’Reilly Media is a PW sponsor and readers can save 20% off ETech registration using discount code et08pgw and save 30% off Graphing Social Patterns with code gspw08pgw.
• Microsoft describes its MIX08 Conference at the Venetian in Las Vegas on March 5-7 as “an intimate conversation between developers, designers and business professionals.” The event focuses on their leading-edge technologies and for mashup developers there’s lots of relevant content including sessions on Windows Live Services, Mashups, Virtual Earth, and Silverlight 2.0. Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer are scheduled to speak, and there is a contest for best WPF/Expression blend-built mash-up.
• Mashup Camp 6: March 17-20, Mountain View, CA. The latest installment of the mashup community’s leading event will feature the same open format as well as the popular speed geeking and mashup contests. This one’s back at the Computer History Museum, a great venue for this event. The two day unconference portion of the event will be preceded by the two day Mashup University with how-to sessions for developers. You can see our earlier coverage of past Mashup Camps here.
• VON.x: March 17-20, San Jose. The largest IP communications event is now in its tenth year. As you can see on our PW dashboard for Telephony APIs there’s a lot happening in this market. Thomas Howe, who helped us create and run this vertical for us will be holding a pre-conference executive summit, Communications Enabled Business Processes, focusing on how to extend and improve business processes using voice APIs and mashups. And part the event this year is the unconference VONcamp where you can help define the agenda.
• Another worthwhile communications event with deep API and mashup content is eComm2008: Emerging Communications Conference, happening March 12-14th in Mountain View. The theme is that VOIP and telephony becomes much more interesting when it’s combined with other “vectors” like open source, social networking, p2p and mashups. As you can see from the schedule, there are presentations from API platform providers including Skype, Google, Twitter, BT, LignUp, and Yahoo on their new Fire Eagle service.

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Posted by John Musser as Events, Facebook, Social, Telephony at 4:20 AM | No Comments »

February 1st, 2008

Graphing Bebo Application Growth

Since Bebo brought its Facebook Platform-compatible API out of closed beta a few weeks ago, as we reported in this post, the initial growth shows a steep curve from about 50 launch partner applications available before Jan 12th to 714 on Jan 26th. For a better sense of what that looks like, the graph below shows the developer uptake since public launch.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Metrics, OpenSocial, Popular, Social at 12:17 AM | 3 Comments »

January 27th, 2008

Facebook Extends Their Platform

An announcement by Facebook late on Friday spotlights how they are attempting to stay ahead of the curve in exploiting the social graph, and in doing so, to make their version of your friend’s list the default one that is used across the web. The key is this new JavaScript library that makes it easier for developers to to make Facebook API calls directly from JavaScript from any web site, not just when running on the Facebook Platform:

This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML…This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported.

Along with allowing individual developers conversant in Ajax to bring Facebook friends into their website’s user experience, as John Potter points out, it opens up a role for third-party developers to craft Facebook-friendly widgets that are easily dropped into blogs and sites that don’t have any Facebook programming experience. The release of this library caused a fair amount of buzz over the weekend from folks including Nick O’Neill, Dare Obasanjo, Jeremiah Owyang, Duncan Riley, and Search Engine Watch.

Recent moves in data portability and OpenSocial-style compatibility suggest that we are moving towards an environment that allows some form of opt-in sharing between elements of the social graph, and Facebook wants to make sure that it is easier to identify your groups of friends by starting with their version. The function of allowing you to organize your friends into groups (family, close friends, business acquaintances, etc.) that was added in December is also a step towards making your control over your social graph easier, and adding lock-in to the Facebook data.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, JavaScript, OpenSocial, Social, Widgets at 8:51 PM | No Comments »

January 15th, 2008

Hasbro Versus Scrabulous

For the third time in as many weeks a Facebook application is the subject of controversy (the other two being the Facebook Hoax and the Facebook Spyware). This time around the news comes via Fortune’s Josh Quittner who reports that Hasbro, the company behind Scrabble, wants to shut down the popular web site and Facebook app Scrabulous. Scrabulous started in 2006 when two bothers, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, created the Scrabble knockoff out of their home in Calcutta, India. It did well that first year but really took off after they ported it to Facebook in June of last year.How popular is it? It’s the 9th most popular Facebook application, has 2.3 million active users and 500K using it every day. And according the Fortune report it has revenues of about $25,000 a month.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Law, Popular, Social at 12:42 AM | 1 Comment »

January 9th, 2008

French Press and Facebook Mashup Hoax

For the second time in a week a third-party Facebook app is the subject of controversy: this time it’s ePresident, an application for nominating the Facebook’s “worldwide President”. Not a serious app of course, but as reported today by TechCrunch’s Ouriel Ohayon, some of the French press, in a series of escalating misunderstandings, has fallen for this as real. In a nutshell: Facebook user Arash Derambarsh ran for this pretend office, complete with campaign site and pledge for global peace, got over 9000 votes, began getting more and more press coverage that often missed the fake-ness of the whole thing, made it to TV, eventually a Facebook group forms denouncing it, and some of the press catches on, and at this point he’s not available for comment.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Popular, Social at 1:13 PM | 1 Comment »

January 7th, 2008

Facebook App Installs Spyware

Anyone who has installed the third party Facebook application “Secret Crush” is at risk of installing spyware according to this report from security firm Fortinet. Apparently the app entices users by saying “one of your friends my have a crush on you” and then once installed it attempts to download the infamous spyware Zango. The malicious widget authors get rewarded with as much as over $1 USD upon each successful installation, according to Zango’s affiliate program rates (note that as of January 4, the widget changed its name from “Secret Crush” to “My Admirer” and as of today WebWare reports that Facebook has disabled the application completely).

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Popular, Security, Social at 2:32 AM | 12 Comments »

December 27th, 2007

API of the Year: Facebook Platform

The statistics are impressive - nearly 12,000 applications produced on the Facebook Platform since its launch on May 24th of this year and according to Adonomics those applications were used over 36 million times in the last 24 hours.

It’s success prompted Google to push out its OpenSocial platform, expected to be widely deployed in 2008, and in turn Facebook has recently opened its platform for use in other social networks, starting with Bebo.

Why the runaway success?

• Openness: It’s a validation of the open API model that has been driving innovation on the Web over the last few years. Open the gates to your customers and let them decide what works. In the Facebook Platform any developer with a good idea and access to mainstream programming skills can join the party and try out ideas, and over 100,000 developers have done so.
• Audience: API-driven access to an audience the size of Facebook’s lead many to jump on board in a hurry. And in many ways the early Facebook developers have been targeting the traditional, younger Facebook audience and gave rise to apps like Flirtable, Vampires, Bumper Sticker, and Send Hotness in the top 100 apps. It’s notable that established brands have not gotten much footing in the application space, and to do so they may want to partner with the trailblazers.
• Money: Openness and youthful enthusiasm are good, but Facebook coupled that with the promise of potential riches by allowing developers to monetize without interference their portion of the page. Although the revenue models are completely unproven outside of the top applications, the potential has led to a sense that there is a ‘land grab’ for user attention, and the development costs are low enough so that developers are worrying about building the audience first and making money off them later.
• Viral Features: A variety of avenues for viral distribution ranging from the news feed to notifications have led to headline-worthy growth for some applications. Even though a few of these options may have been dialed-back by Facebook there’s still opportunity to use this platform for rapid, network-effects growth.
• Plug-in model and Constraints: Facebook facilitated the rapid adoption of the outside developer applications by building a plug-in style platform and having developers conform to a specific user experience, in the profile, the news feed, the application’s canvas page, and the installation and privacy procedures. This gives users the confidence to install and sample many apps, knowing that the learning curve of understanding and evaluating an app is in minutes. The level of viralness seen in the applications would never have happened without these constraints.
• Metrics: The traditional cycle of product development - analyze, develop, test, and rework before release - has been turned on its head in the Facebook environment, where many of the strongest applications were designed and released in a matter of days. This was done with the knowledge that by paying careful attention to the usage metrics supplied by Facebook, the applications can be rapidly tweaked and reconfigured, with the audience subliminally influencing the product’s direction.

Of course there are drawbacks and minefields ahead - the predictable backlash against ‘too many apps’, privacy concerns, rapidly evolving technology platform, the preponderance of low-commitment apps, and the difficulty developers have making money in the long tail. Given the growing competitive challenges its success in 2008 is not guaranteed. But as a provocative game-changer, the Facebook Platform wins the API of the Year award for 2007.

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Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Social at 10:18 AM | 6 Comments »

December 19th, 2007

OpenSocial Shindig Released

If you are interested in hosting OpenSocial compatible widgets in your web site you’ll probably want to keep an eye on the open source project Shindig. What is it? As Google product manager Dan Peterson describes in Let’s get this shindig started: “Shindig is a new project in the Apache Software Foundation’s incubator (as per the formal proposal) that aims to provide an open source reference implementation of the entire OpenSocial stack — Shindig’s goal is to allow new sites to start hosting social apps in well under an hour’s worth of work.” This source “is based upon code that has been powering Google Gadgets and iGoogle for the past few years and is meant to bootstrap the Shindig project.”

It’s a multi-part project and this first commit includes code for the first two of the four components below:

• Gadget Container JavaScript — core JavaScript foundation for general gadget functionality (read more about gadget functionality). This JavaScript manages security, communication, UI layout, and feature extensions, such as the OpenSocial API.
• Gadget Server — an open source version of gmodules.com, which is used to render the gadget xml into JavaScript and HTML for the container to expose via the container JavaScript.
• OpenSocial Container JavaScript — JavaScript environment that sits on top of the Gadget Container JS and provides OpenSocial specific functionality (profiles, friends, activities).
• OpenSocial Gateway Server — an open source implementation of the server interface to container-specific information, including the OpenSocial REST APIs, with clear extension points so others can connect it to their own backends.

This initial release has not yet been tested for “production-level traffic” but can help folks get started. If or how you use this also depends on your team’s skillset: “While the initial contribution of the Gadget Server was written in Java, Shindig is language neutral. Ning is planning to contribute an initial version of a PHP Gadget Server, and we’ve heard rumors of C#, Perl, and Ruby.”

With Facebook now licensing their code and Google working to foster a community around OpenSocial and Shindig it looks like news in the social API space won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

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Posted by John Musser as Code, Facebook, Google, OpenSocial, Social at 12:18 AM | 4 Comments »