LinkedIn to open up to developers
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Blog: The social networking company plans to launch an API to connect to other services.
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Facebook will help other social networking sites to run applications developed for its own software platform, it said Thursday.
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TechWeb - The new members aim to strengthen the organization's efforts to create an open source mobile software platform.
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Developers will get to write applications for the iPhone. Sort of.
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Social-networking site to unveil a set of developer tools for potentially converting existing Facebook applications.
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KickApps has updated its hosted social networking platform to allow non-programmers to add Web 2.0 capabilities to corporate web sites.
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Following Facebook's lead, MySpace will allow outside developers to create applications for its members.
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InfoWorld - MySpace will open the doors of its developer Web site on Tuesday and make available there the necessaryÂ tools to build applications for the world's most popular social-networking site.
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MySpace Wednesday will begin letting programmers pre-register for its developer platform program, which will open for business next week.Interested developers will be able to sign up on the site to receive information about the MySpace Developer Platform, announced in October. Then next Tuesday, the developer site will become fully operational and feature documentation and API tools to build and test applications for MySpace, the world&#39;s most popular social networking service.Although over the years MySpace has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, some external developers to put their widgets on the social networking site, the upcoming program potentially&#160;opens the door to any coder&#160;by providing open APIs and makes it possible for developers to generate revenue from those applications.&quot;This gives developers deeper access to our community through APIs so they&#39;ll be able to build richer applications and also gives them an opportunity to build their business directly on MySpace. It&#39;s a natural step in the evolution of how we&#39;ve worked with third party developers,&quot; said Amit Kapur, who has just been appointed chief operating officer after being in charge of business development for several years.In October, the move was widely seen as a competitive response to rival&#160;Facebook&#39;s successful opening of its platform&#160;to outside developers in May, which has resulted in the creation of about 14,000 applications and widgets for that social networking site.Other social networking companies have also followed suit and decided to let external developers create applications for their sites. Moreover, in November, Google launched its&#160;OpenSocial initiative to promote industry-wide adoption of common APIs for social applications, so that developers can more easily port their applications to different sites. MySpace, along with others, has indicated it supports OpenSocial.As it gears up for the launch of the application development platform, MySpace has taken special care to put safeguards in place to prevent security and privacy breaches from third-party applications, Kapur said.&quot;A key interest we have as we launch this platform is to protect the user experience against things like application spam and security holes, so that&#39;ll be a major part of our launch. We&#39;re extremely committed to safety and security,&quot; he said.Facebook has been dealing with this problem, as some over-eager developers have built self-promotion features into their applications to spur their adoption. Since its platform launch, Facebook has tweaked its tools and APIs several times to address the problem of applications that annoy users with intrusive displays and unsolicited messages, and seems to have the issue well under control now.&#160;
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TechWeb - More than 65 developer partners had created software applications based on the social networking site, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
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Belatedly recognizing the importance of social networking as an online service and advertising vehicle, Google this week will unleash its strongest response yet to the rising threat and skyrocketing popularity of MySpace and Facebook.On Thursday, Google will announce OpenSocial, an initiative with a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) at its core that is designed &quot;to spread social applications across the Web,&quot; the company said.These common APIs have been designed to let developers create social networking applications that will run on multiple Web sites, simplifying the making and distribution of these programs.Partners supporting OpenSocial include various well-known software developers and social networking sites: Oracle, Salesforce.com, Hi5, iLike, LinkedIn, Slide, Ning, Friendster, and Plaxo. Neither Facebook nor MySpace is on the list of partners at press time.The move is also no doubt intended to dilute the massive&#160;success Facebook has had in attracting external developers&#160;since it opened up its Web site platform to third-party applications in May.About 7,000 such applications have been built for Facebook so far, helping to make the social networking site more attractive to people and thus boosting its usage.&#160;MySpace recently announced it would follow Facebook&#39;s example.By allowing developers to write an application once and have it work in multiple social networking sites, the OpenSocial initiative could, in theory, water down the appeal of Facebook&#39;s ballooning applications catalogue.Once considered a fad of interest mostly to teens and young adults, social networks have significantly broadened their demographic appeal, attracting many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.Along the way, social networking sites have been created for other purposes beyond entertainment and staying in touch with friends. For example, there are social networks tailored for specific occupations, such as doctors, and interests, such as sports.Google has had a social networking site named Orkut for several years, but it doesn&#39;t seem to have merited much attention from the company until recently, and only after the popularity and potential of this type of site became evident.Google was reportedly locked in a battle with Microsoft&#160;over which one would be chosen by Facebook to buy a stake in the social networking company and earn a deal to provide advertising to it.Microsoft eventually won, buying a 1.6 percent stake that values Facebook at an eye-popping $15 billion, although the social networking company reportedly will have revenue of just $150 million this year.With about 300 employees now, Facebook expects to have about 700 a year from now, its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said. About 250,000 new users register every day at Facebook, which was founded in 2004.In June, MySpace had 114.1 million unique visitors worldwide, ranking first among social networking sites, followed by Facebook with 52.2 million, according to comScore. Hi5 ranked third with 28.2 million, while Friendster was fourth with 24.7 million. Orkut rounded out the top 5 with 24.1 million.More information about OpenSocial and resources for developers will be available in this Web site later this week. There will also be a developer sandbox.
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Partners get tools, encouragement to put applications online.
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InfoWorld - Social networking giant MySpace will open its platform to outside application developers,Â a move that was made months ago by its close competitor FacebookÂ and helped boost its popularity.
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Company already uses others' open-source modules, but its own foundation follows suit in a bid to lure developers and customers.
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Facebook announced yesterday that it is taking the unusual step of allowing the public to develop features for the popular social-networking Web site, permitting any software designer to access the company's millions of members.
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Company plans to open a software development center later this year in Vancouver, partly because of immigration issue.
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MySpace will open the doors of its developer Web site on Tuesday and make available there the necessary&#160;tools to build applications for the world&#39;s most popular social-networking site.Developers will have about one month to familiarize themselves with the development tools and create and test applications before MySpace begins letting its members install them early in March.&quot;Developers will be able to build applications, but they&#39;ll be in the sandbox environment where consumers won&#39;t be able to see them,&quot; said Kyle Brinkman, vice president and general manager of Platform for MySpace.With the opening of the developer Web site, MySpace gets closer to&#160;catching up to its main rival, Facebook, which opened its platform to external developers in May.For Facebook, despite some bumps along the way, opening its platform has been overwhelmingly positive. More than 14,000 applications have been created for the site, which in turn has increased its attractiveness to current and potential members.MySpace isn&#39;t alone in following Facebook&#39;s lead, as most major social-networking site operators have decided to open their platforms to external developers as well.In addition to the individual developer platforms,&#160;Google unveiled in November its OpenSocial project, which aims to provide a set of common APIs (application programming interfaces) for social-networking operators to adopt, so that applications built with those APIs will work across multiple sites.To make sure that the applications are safe to use, MySpace will test all of them before making them available to its members, Brinkman said.Developers will be able to generate revenue from their applications by placing advertising on their applications&#39; &quot;canvas&quot; pages, where members manage the applications they install. Developers will get to keep 100 percent of the advertising revenue generated on canvas pages, Brinkman said.Developers can choose to run ads from third-party ad providers as long as the ads conform to MySpace policies, such as not containing pornographic content. Moreover, MySpace will let developers run ads from two new ad services that it is beta testing and that it plans to launch at a later date called HyperTargeting and SelfServe, Brinkman said.In addition to the canvas page, applications will also be featured on their own profile pages, where developers will be able to explain in detail what each application does and how it works. Moreover, there will be a gallery where the applications will be listed. Of course, the applications will also appear on the profiles of members who install them and on members&#39; MySpace home pages.MySpace will make available three types of APIs to developers: Google&#39;s OpenSocial APIs with MySpace extensions for building applications in JavaScript and HTML; ActionScript to build Flash applications; and Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs for applications that require server-to-server connections.Applications will be able to make use of data on MySpace profiles, but they will be governed by existing privacy controls that apply to members.The MySpace Developer Platform site will also include documentation, sample code and discussion forums.Also on Tuesday, MySpace will launch a blog geared toward developers , where MySpace staffers will post relevant information and news about the program.&#160;