OpenSocial now friends with PHP, Java, Ruby, and Python

With more and more containers introducing server-to-server APIs based on the OpenSocial REST and RPC protocols (think MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, orkut, and iGoogle just for starters), it has never been a better time to jump into OpenSocial development. These new protocols allow you to write engaging social applications for these containers using the language of your choice -- JavaScript is no longer the only option.

To help you get started using the OpenSocial REST and RPC protocols, we have assembled a set of client libraries for PHP, Java, Ruby and Python. Each library enables developers to retrieve profile information and persistent data from supporting containers without having to concern themselves with managing network connections, signing requests, or other lower-level details. To check out the code, point your browsers to the Source tab linked from each project's home page:

• OpenSocial PHP Client Library
• OpenSocial Java Client Library
• OpenSocial Ruby Client Library
• OpenSocial Python Client Library
  

These libraries are completely open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license, and contributions are not only welcomed but encouraged. In addition to a wiki page explaining the patch submission process, each project hosts an issue tracker which have already been populated with known issues and requested enhancements. These trackers are the best places to start if you're interested in contributing to a particular project. Please report any new bugs or incompatibilities you find along with any feature requests using these trackers and be sure to star those reported by other developers which are significant to your own development also so they can be prioritized effectively.

To help get you started, we have assembled a set of sample applications, linked from the project wiki pages, which you can run directly from the command line or your favorite IDE. As an added bonus, the Ruby and Python libraries have accompanying full-featured sample applications which you can run inside containers supporting the OpenSocial REST protocol. These larger samples are checked in to the Subversion repository under "Samples" and include a bootstrap mechanism for securely retrieving the ID of the current viewer before the core application loads, which you can use as a template for your own container-based applications.

For general questions and commentary, we have set up a discussion group to help build the developer community around the libraries. The original engineers of each library are already members of the group, so feel free to ask the tough questions. :) We will also be hosting a special session of IRC office hours next Monday, December 22 from 1:00 to 3:00 (PST) so you can share your feedback with us directly. The official OpenSocial IRC channel is located at irc://irc.freenode.net/#opensocial.

We're really excited to see the next generation of social applications that the OpenSocial server-to-server APIs enable, and we hope the client libraries ease you along your development journey. Please give the libraries a spin, file any issues you see, and stop by the IRC channel next week to get your questions answered. See you there!

Posted by Jason Cooper, Developer Programs

OpenSocial meets My Yahoo! with the Yahoo! Application Platform

Yesterday Yahoo! unveiled a set of new features and opportunities for both users and developers across many of our most popular products. Earlier this year at Yahoo! we made a commitment to re-wire our products based on a new platform initiative, called the Yahoo! Open Strategy, making them drastically more social and significantly more open to content and services from third-party developers and publishers. Part of that effort was to take on a role with the OpenSocial Foundation and be an active contributor to the community.

Now we’re taking that effort a step further by opening up My Yahoo! to apps developed through the Yahoo! Application Platform. Now, developers across the community will have the opportunity to get My Yahoo! users trying out and using their applications using the OpenSocial JavaScript API and Yahoo! Social Rest APIs in the canvas full view and HTML/CSS in the My Yahoo! View.

My Yahoo! is a great opportunity for developers. It’s been a pioneer and leader of personalized start pages since 1996 with more than 20 million monthly visitors in the US alone. And of course, opening up Yahoo! products and services to OpenSocial apps is just one part of our effort. As a founding member of the OpenSocial Foundation, we’re also committed to supporting the complete OpenSocial specification and are working with the community to expand the specification, starting with version 0.9, and adopting the OpenSocial REST protocol.

For now, though, you can get started today and delight the tens of millions of My Yahoo! users. Check out our forums and stay up to date with other upcoming OpenSocial news and improvements to the Yahoo! Application Platform.


Posted by Xavier Legros, Director Product - Yahoo! Application Platform

OpenSocial's birthday wrap-up: it's good to be one

A little over a week ago, the OpenSocial Foundation celebrated -- along with 250+ close friends -- the one year anniversary of the introduction of OpenSocial. It was a great opportunity for everyone involved to get together and reflect on the past year, brainstorm about what's in store for the next year, and write a bunch of code.

To wrap things up, there were several good sessions:

• OpenSocial State of the Union [ VIDEO | SLIDES ]
• OpenSocial 0.9 Preview [ VIDEO | SLIDES ]
• Several app developers sharing their experiences and tips
• Updates from more than a dozen OpenSocial containers
• Demos of tools available that improve the OpenSocial developer experience
  
• Breakout sessions about OpenSocial 0.9, various app architectures, and using OpenSocial "outside" containers
• The day after, there was also a well-attended deep dive to discuss the prototypes for OpenSocial 0.9

You can find links to all the videos and presentations on the OpenSocial Birthday agenda, and on the OpenSocial Foundation's new YouTube channel.

One of the most exciting pieces of the event was the realization that developers using OpenSocial can now reach more than 600M users across more than 20 sites -- a number that is ever growing (some highlights are featured in the chart below):


In terms of launches during the event, MySpace launched support for OpenSocial v0.8, Xiaonei launched support for OpenSocial to their 30M users in China, and OpenSocial.org got a fresh new look. In addition, during the past year we've -- collectively -- achieved some other good results:

• 315M+ app installs
• 85M+ daily canvas page views
• 7,500+ applications
• 20+ live containers

All in all, it was great to get the community together, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone get involved on the wiki, in the spec list, and building apps. Special thanks to RockYou for helping sponsor the party.

... and yes, we even sang "Happy Birthday" to OpenSocial over cake (check out some of the pics below).

Posted by Dan Peterson, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

(Photo credits: Ben Metcalfe)

OpenSocial's First Birthday: Detailed Agenda -- November 13 in San Francisco

As blogged before, next Thursday, November 13, is the official event for OpenSocial's first birthday being hosted by the OpenSocial Foundation at MySpace's SF office (SOMA).

As you can see from the complete agenda, it's filling out to be quite a day. Some of the highlights:

• OpenSocial: State of the Union
• App Developers sharing their experiences:
• PhotoBuzz, RockYou, and PixVerse
• OpenSocial 0.9: What does it mean for me?
• Demos of Developer Tools:
• OpenSocial Dev App, zembly, and iWidgets
• "Global Container Crawl" programming contest
• How many containers can you get running on?
• Engineers from around the world will be on-hand to help
• ... including: hi5, Hyves, iGoogle, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, orkut, Viadeo, Yahoo!
• ... among others
• Breakout sessions for discussions and prototyping

Since a lot of people will be in town for the birthday event, on Friday, November 14, MySpace SF is also hosting OpenSocial 0.9 Face to Face, so folks have an additional opportunity to get together and discuss spec proposals for 0.9 and prototype on the latest implementations.

For the birthday, please be sure to RSVP -- so we can get enough birthday cake.

Posted by Dan Peterson, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

OpenSocial Foundation: The Election Results Are in!

The OpenSocial Foundation community representatives election has concluded. With 311 eligible voters and 213 valid ballots cast, the community has selected Jay Parikh, and Joseph Smarr to serve as the two community representatives for this year's board. Congratulations to Jay and Joseph!

By way of introduction...

A bit about Jay Parikh:

Mr. Parikh is passionate about technology, platforms, and leading innovative product development. Currently, Mr. Parikh is the Senior Vice President of Product Engineering at Ning where he oversees the product development, engineering, and operations teams. This team is responsible for creating and scaling Ning's social networking platform that today powers nearly 500,000 social networks. Prior to joining Ning, Mr. Parikh was the Vice President of Engineering at Akamai Technologies. During his nine years at Akamai, Mr. Parikh led the product engineering teams responsible for many of the distributed delivery and acceleration solutions used by the majority of Akamai’s customers.

A bit about Joseph Smarr:

Joseph Smarr is Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo. He is currently leading Plaxo’s “Open Social Web” initiative to put users back in control of who they know when using socially-enabled sites by using open data-sharing standards. An active participant in the Web 2.0 community, Joseph has built web applications for many years, including Plaxo’s online address book, web widgets, and was architect and lead developer of the Plaxo 3.0 rich AJAX address book, calendar, and sync tool. Joseph has a BS and MS from Stanford University in Artificial Intelligence.

Please also give your regards to the other candidates for their participation in the election and the OpenSocial community.

For those of you looking to get involved with OpenSocial, there are many ways outside the board, including:

• wiki.opensocial.org: Contribute to documenting best practices and articles on the new OpenSocial community wiki
• Get Started Building Apps: Brainstorm, check out a few tutorials, and get programming
• OpenSocial Spec Process: Participate in the on-going evolution of OpenSocial's technical specification

See you on the forums!

Posted by Dan Peterson, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

51.com 开放平台 launches OpenSocial to 31M+ unique users

The 51.com platform team announced that the 51.com Developer Platform launched OpenSocial support on Oct. 18, and successfully ran a live OpenSocial app called Emote developed by RockYou, becoming the first large-scale social networking site in China to successfully do so.

The 51.com Developer Platform currently supports OpenSocial APIs for accessing user and friends' profile info and enables application development using the OpenSocial 0.7 JavaScript API. 51.com plans to continue adding features to their OpenSocial platform, starting with support for the REST and RPC protocols, as defined in OpenSocial 0.8.1.

For those interested in developing OpenSocial applications, you may implement your creative ideas on the 51.com Developer Platform, gaining instant access to 31.5 million active users on 51.com.

To learn more about OpenSocial application development on 51.com, go to the OpenSocial developer community on the 51.com Developer Platform.

51.com provides social networking services to Chinese users worldwide. It is the fastest growing social network in China and has consistently taken a leadership role in providing products and services and advancing related technologies in the social networking industry.

51.com currently has 130 million registered user accounts with an active user base of 31.5 million, concurrent online users of nearly 1.1M, and average daily page views of more than 300 million. Users spend an average of 41 minutes each session on 51.com and upload 10 million photos, write 3 million blogs, and listen to 35 million songs daily.

Posted by Changyong Zhang (张长永), Product Manager, 51.com

LinkedIn Launched InApps Platform with OpenSocial

I’m happy to report that LinkedIn just launched their Intelligent Applications Platform (InApps), built using the OpenSocial 0.8 specification. This initial release features a healthy set of productivity applications, which provide new avenues for collaboration across the 30 million users on LinkedIn. It's exciting to see LinkedIn paving the way for a whole new type of OpenSocial applications, and thus expanding OpenSocial into the professional context.

The apps available today come from companies such as Amazon, TripIt, SlideShare, and Google. You can start using the applications by visiting the LinkedIn Application Directory. LinkedIn works closely with each developer to ensure a good user experience and chooses partners based on the professional utility of applications, the quality of technology and content, and the integrity of the company’s privacy practices.

For those interested in building applications on LinkedIn, there is a lot of good news:

• As part of OpenSocial 0.8, LinkedIn deployed a REST endpoint with OAuth support
• There are unique monetization opportunities for apps built for LinkedIn
• LinkedIn is offering support for all of the "viral" messaging channels defined in OpenSocial:
  • requestSendMessage
  • requestShareApp
  • activities integration directly into "Network Updates"
• InApps is built using Shindig (Java)
• Going forward, LinkedIn is working on support for OpenSocial 0.8.1, and providing a developer sandbox

To find out more about building an application on LinkedIn, please get in touch with LinkedIn, and come chat at the upcoming OpenSocial birthday event on November 13.

Posted by Dan Peterson, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation