Web Development Live

MySpace opens up to developers

Social site Bebo opens up to outside developers

The search giants OpenSocial program, presently little more than a concept despite having the support of most major social networks, was born out of criticisms Facebook was too closed.
It promised a platform where software developers could write plug-in programs that were supported by all social networks, instead of picking sides.
But in a shock announcement to its 100,000 third-party developers, Facebook said its platform was now open to anyone, even arch-rival MySpace.
Previously, applications written for Facebook - like FunWall, iLike, Scrabulous and Vampires - could only be accessed by Facebook users.
Bebo, the third most popular social network behind MySpace and Facebook, has already linked up with Facebook, allowing its users to add Facebook applications to their profiles.
Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what weve learned, everyone wins - users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications, Facebooks Ami Vora wrote.
The move is being seen partly as an attempt by Facebook to salvage its public image after it copped a beating over its controversial new advertising system, which shared users private activities on external sites with their friends.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised earlier this month for breaching user privacy in the pursuit of profits and wound back the more controversial aspects of the advertising system.
But opening up its plug-in applications to other social networks is also a strategic move to maintain its dominance and cut out OpenSocial before it launches.
Google recently announced OpenSocial wouldnt be ready until January, and many of its initial partners, including Bebo, LinkedIn and Friendster, have subsequently announced their own application platform initiatives that are separate to OpenSocial.
But in a statement today, Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said OpenSocial was definitely still on track and all partners were still on board.
We all have the same goal of making the Web more social in more interesting ways, he said.
We support all initiatives to make the Web more open, which in this case means developers can reach users faster and users can get new features faster.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch joined MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe to make the announcement before Silicon Valley’s Internet elite and answer

questions about the media conglomerate’s digital future.

“We are opening our platform in the next couple of months,” DeWolfe said, confirming months of speculation that MySpace would follow in the footsteps of

Facebook, which emerged as a serious competitor after allowing software developers to create applications for its users.

At the same time Murdoch signaled lower expectations for MySpace revenue in the company’s 2008 fiscal year ending in June, suggesting it may not reach a

previous forecast of over $US800 million.

“I might say $US750 (million) but it’s at least 30 times what it was the day we bought it two years ago,” Murdoch said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San

Francisco. “If we keep that trajectory going like that we’ll be very happy.”

Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace for $US580 million in 2005 crowned him as the smartest media executive at the time, once rivals realized the potential of

its growing base of users for promotions and advertising.

But privately-held Facebook has surged to a strong second place in the social network world since it opened its site a year ago beyond an original base of

college students and started allowing in May independent software makers to build applications for users and profit from it.

“There’s been so much excitement, energy and growth on the part of Facebook,” said Forrester analyst Charlene Li.

“There’s a lot of pressure on MySpace to capture that energy.”

While MySpace remains the leader with nearly 110 million users, Facebook’s rapid growth to over 47 million members has made it a new media darling, with

media reports pegging its potential value to investors as high as $US15 billion.

“I would say we’re different (than Facebook) and in spite of all the hype we seem to be growing faster,” Murdoch said.

Asked what he thought of such a valuation, Murdoch added: “What it really does is it tells you that News Corp is totally underpriced.”

MYSPACE IS THEIR SPACE

For four years MySpace has allowed users to embed features from other Web sites by pasting bits of code on their MySpace pages.

But Facebook’s open call to developers has already attracted 6,000 independent applications to its site.

“YouTube, for one, basically generated all their early traffic on MySpace,” DeWolfe said of the company’s traditional willingness to let other Web

companies build businesses on MySpace. YouTube is the online video unit of Google.

DeWolfe said he was seeking to create a far more lucrative environment for outside developers on MySpace than currently exists on Facebook, where so far

advertising opportunities for independent application developers are limited.

“The idea will be to allow outside developers to tightly integrate their applications into MySpace,” DeWolfe told Reuters following his on-stage appearance.

Software programmers will be able to control key aspects of how features like photos or user authentication work, allowing them to build more complex Web

services than the restrictive approach MySpace has employed to date with outsiders.

Importantly, the company plans to give developers control over advertising that runs on the Web pages they create to host new services on MySpace.

“There is going to be paid revenue opportunities for all the developers,” DeWolfe said.

MySpace also plans to take steps to protect its users from potential security problems or overload created by a sudden flood of new applications.

It is setting up a “sandbox” version of the site for 2 million users who elect to get early access to new applications while they are still in test mode.

DeWolfe also said he and MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson have signed up for an additional two-year contract. He did not disclose financial terms.

MySpace had already taken steps to bulk up its presence and showcase its technology expertise, opening an office in San Francisco this week with about

50 employees and plans to expand its team to about 200 people within the next year.

What would happen if your angry rantings from when you were 15 %26ndash; now maybe hidden in a dust-covered diary at the bottom of a box inthe garage %26ndash; were suddenly available for all to see and snicker at?
It would be embarrassing, and potentially devastating, if those childish views were used to define you as an adult. If every time you appliedfor a job, they were copied into your file along with your psychometric test results and curriculum vitae.
Yet this is what is facing a whole generation of young people whoare coming into the world of work carrying a whole portfolio of revelations from their blogs and networking sites.
Parents in the United States are so concerned about the potential impact on their childrens careers, that they are employing companies to search out and destroy any damaging references on the internet.
Reputationdefender also sends monthly reports on online reputations, so parents can keep an eye on any new postings.
Australian-resident futurist Richard Watson says it is no wonder there are concerns about young peoples unguarded attitudes to personal privacy: networking sites have become a recruitment tool for employers.
The managing director of the Slade Partners recruitment company, AnitaZiemer, says there is anecdotal evidence that young people are being burned by their lack of circumspection.
In one case, a young woman was writing to her Facebook friends that she was not doing anything, but had to get up for her `skanky job the next morning. She had forgotten that her boss was one of her Facebook contacts.
Two Family First election hopefuls embarrassed their conservative party last month when private photographs were circulated online:there were pictures of Andrew Quah exposing himself, sourced fromemails he said he sent to friends (he was expelled from the party), while Renee Sciberras was shown partying (rather tamely, really) in photos from her Facebook site.
The managing director of corporate consultancy Hewitt Associates in Australia, David Brown, says that although he thinks the differences between the generations have been overstated, one real area of change is young peoples attitudes to privacy and information.
Brown says security of intellectual property is becoming a real headache for employers because of the tendency of younger people (generation Ys, up to 27 years) to move jobs so frequently.
Intellectual property is a big issue, agrees Watson, who recently published a book that attempts to predict trends, Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years.
Watson says young people today are a breed of their own. Generation Y is different %26ndash; they are incredibly well connected. They haveg rown up with rapid change and they have incredibly limited attentionspans.
Research shows that young people feel closer to their community offriends and peers (in a community that spreads beyond company boundaries)than they do to their employer. They are also more collaborative intheir style of working. This means that they are likely to solve problemsby sending them out online to people who are not necessarily associatedwith their company, says Watson.
People in their 20s have grown up with the concept of open- sourceprinciples in the IT sphere, where companies make their software availableto all with little or no intellectual property restrictions. Somesoftware developers send code out into cyberspace in the expectationthat others will improve and refine it for them.
As well as making their lives an open book on networking sites, peopleare also putting their photo albums online for all to see . . . anduse.
Virgin ran into strife last month when it used an image in advertising lifted from photo-sharing site Flickr. The sites creative common licence means that the photographers make their pictures freely available to others, so long as the photographer and website are appropriately credited. Virgin ran into problems, however, when it superimposed cheeky slogans over the image of a 16-year-old American girl who complained of being humiliated. With developments such as this, the old assumptions about copyright and ownership of information are looking pretty wobbly.
Watson says companies are now grappling with the fact that employees armed with iPods are able to steal a whole database from them. The Australian Financial Review reported last year that the breach or theft of confidential information was responsible for the highest proportion of financial losses for companies in the past year: A $2million ($2.36m) per company on average.
Organisations are trying to find ways to control or adapt to these attitudes; many are introducing new levels of corporate transparency to be more attractive to employees and investors. Some of that opennessis regulated, such as revealing executive salaries, and some is voluntary, such as detailing corporate social responsibility impacts.
At the moment, fewer than 10 per cent of companies in Australia publish in their annual reports their employee engagement statistics, which measure how satisfied and engaged their people are at work.
ANZ and IAG were the first two in Australia to publish them, and that was a very brave thing to do, says Brown. That is now shaming others into doing it too.
Brown, whose firm undertakes employee engagement research for companies, says there will be increasing pressure on employers to reveal these statistics, which will be compared by job seekers and financial analysts. Macquarie Bank analysts have used employee engagement material in their reports on Commonwealth Bank of Australia and National AustraliaBank.
But we also have clients who have made a conscious decision not to survey employee engagement, Brown says. They dont want to know because it means they would have to take responsibility . . . It might be effective in the short term, but long term, it is real head-in-the-sand stuff.
Many employers have blocked access to networking sites, fearing that their young people will spend too much time contacting friends and updating their profiles.
They are doing it much in the same way that companies restricted the use of the internet a few years ago because of web surfing and banned personal phone calls before that.
But Watson says that with the blending of work and private time, itis no longer practical to ask people to keep their minds on the job while they are in the office. If they are expected to be available 24 hours a day, when are they expected to do their banking, keep track of the children and plan their holidays?
%26ndash;Australian Financial Review

Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia’s forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites. “If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers,” said Wales, chairman of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. “I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome.” Wikia %26#150; which has helped groups set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on topics ranging from popular TV shows to specialist health or travel %26#150; plans to develop an “open source” Web search service with the help of volunteers. Wales founded the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia encyclopedia, a non-commercial project that is one of the Web’s most popular sites. He also co-founded the Wikia ad-supported network of self-edited wiki sites. However, the two organisations have no formal ties. The new Wikia search service will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007, Wales said in a phone interview. Human editors would help untangle terms with multiple meanings, such as palm, which can refer to location like Palm Beach, or generic topics like trees or handheld computers. Search results are generated via another open-source software project called Lucerne. Wales said he is looking at options to enhance Lucerne, but would not detail his plans. Grub was originally an open source project that was freely available to software makers to enhance as long as they shared any improvements they made. Wikia has acquired Grub from LookSmart Ltd., which had halted work on the project. Wikia plans to open up Grub to other developers to make improvements or to incorporate the crawler into other sites. Terms of the deal between Wikia (http://wikia.com) and LookSmart were not disclosed. However, last week, San Francisco-based LookSmart, which provides banner and search-based online advertising to Web sites, said it had agreed to supply advertising across Wikia’s network of wiki sites. Wikia had been using Google’s advertising service. “We have interest from a lot of other commercial players in the search space,” said Wales. Grub relies on distributed computing technology to power the crawler. Computer users who download the software at http://www.grub.org can share computer processing time when they are not using their machines, cutting the cost of Wikia developing its own network of computers to crawl the Web. Open search is part of Wikia’s broader push to promote the spread of free content publishing on the Web. Wales’ objective is to make explicit the editorial judgments involved in modern Web search systems. Proprietary search systems such as Google Inc. keep secret key details of how their search systems work to prevent spamming and for competitive reasons. Ultimately, Wales wants the Wikia search service to be available to other Web sites and smaller publishers who would be able to install a custom version of the service that points Web site visitors only to links with a specific site. Target customers might include local newspapers, for example. He detailed his plans at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, an annual gathering of open source software developers. More details can be found at http://search.wikia.com. Wikia has raised $US14 ($NZ18.08) million in outside financing, including its latest round of $US10 million from Amazon.com, according to a regulatory filing by the company.