OpenSocial Archive

Today at Graphing Social Patterns, executives from hi5, AOL, MySpace and imeem provided updates on their OpenSocial platform usage. Patrick Chanezon from Google opened by explaining that Chinese service OpenPNE out of China and StudiVZ out of Germany are the two newest OpenSocial providers. He also shared some updated stats:

– 19 days in production
– 275 million users
– 66 million installs
– 2,000 applications built on OpenSocial
– 20,000 developers
– 10 million daily app users

AOL

The AOL OpenSocial discussion was brief as the panel was almost out of time but the discussion focused on the third-party and advertising aspects.

imeem

imeem focused on music and showed off some basic OpenSocial goodies you could build on imeem. Apparently you can access the entire music library on imeem using OpenSocial.

MySpace

MySpace came out of the gate boasting how large they are and noted they are twice as large as the nearest competitor (without naming Facebook). The pitch was simple, “want to reach the largest OpenSocial community? Build on MySpace.” Staggering stat: 12% of all Internet minutes are spent on MySpace! The MySpace guy wouldn’t answer my question about the costs associated with being a “featured app” – said something about being a developer and not a business guy. I don’t buy it for a minute mister!

hi5

For some reason, the hi5 guy decided to open by putting on a gray shirt – he said that all business people wear blue shirts and khaki pants (luckily he didn’t take his pants off!) – the stunt didn’t seem to get much of a reaction from the audience. It felt like hi5 was the little engine that could from his presentation. They do have very strong adoption of the OpenSocial apps by their community.

Geared primarily at the youth of Europe, social networking site Netlog has announced that it has joined Google’s OpenSocial program. Check out the details of their OpenSocial implementation.

Netlog plans to focus on localization of OpenSocial apps and unlike most of the other OpenSocial providers, will offer their apps in multiple languages. Netlog will actively help developers to localize their applications in various European languages. They are also going to focus on apps that add advertising stating, "The development of quality applications, in combination with advertising and Netlog’s unique credit eco-system, offers an unprecedented opportunity for companies to engage directly with their customers."

Netlog reports 35 million members, 4 billion monthly pageviews and 25 million unique monthly visitors. I don’t know much about Netlog and checking with two of my European connections, they haven’t heard of it either.

This follows yesterday’s news that AOL has joined OpenSocial.

Social network hi5 is out today with some initial stats since the launch of their developer platform and OpenSocial integration. OpenSocial is the Google program to allow developers to create applications that can basically work anywhere with only minor tweaks. The platform officially launched on March 31 and so far there are over 400 new OpenSocial applications running on hi5. In the last two months, 6,000 developers have signed up to develop OpenSocial apps for hi5.

The other stats the company provided include:

• Top apps achieving unprecedented traction, with faster adoption rates than other social networks; hi5 Platform averaging 1M app installs daily
• Half of hi5’s active users engaged with three or more apps installed; most popular apps involve friend interactions, individual/cultural expression and fun  

OpenSocial has been quiet on the blog front lately but as the platforms grow that utilize OpenSocial, we will see more developer chatter and more services utilizing the OpenSocial framework. On a side note, somehow hi5 was left out of the SAI Top 25.

This morning Yahoo, Google and MySpace announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation. There is a call scheduled for 1pm Eastern to discuss the news. Below are our live call notes – newest notes at the top. We will note once the call has concluded.

1:28 – call has completed.

1:24 – Marshall / ReadWriteWeb – any thoughts of splintering as each container is customizing? And can you give us an update on Microsoft’s relationship? David – one of the initial design goals was to include flexibility and to allow container appropriate tuning. We would welcome others to participate moving forward.

1:20 – Eric/Venture Beat – what is the progress of OS? Joe – topline figures – announced last fall, at the time it was specification 0.5, the community has come together and moved to 0.7 and this was launch-ready spec. So far two major container partners have launched: Orkut and MySpace and Hi5 is coming next tuesday. So the total reach is about 200 million users and the reach is substantial.  Don’t have any active numbers. Wade – open the spec via the foundation makes it safer for all involved.

1:18 – David/ARS Technica – There’s talk about monetization and protection of IP with CC, will there be any support that any IP rights? David – that’s something the foundation could look at and help provide an environment.  

1:15 – Erick from TC – Will there be any revenue opps to OpenSocial can you speak to how that revenue would be split? To what extent why these 3 companies, why weren’t the others included? Joe – the idea was to invite the entire community to create the foundation and the entire community will be involved in the process. What you have seen is MyS/Yah/Google enter into an IP arrangement. As for monetization, the OS protocols does not say anything regarding monetization. Each of the networks handling OS can decide with their developers how they will handle it.  Steve – any monies that come into the foundation, would help further the foundation’s objectives.

1:14 – Miguel Helt/NYT - Is the Foundation a response to yahoo believing that google would control too much of the IP? We’ve seen a lot of community support and it’s a community based effort and this takes it to the next step and Google has played a key role and is something we’d all like to see happen. 

1:13 – question time from the attendees 

1:10 – Steve Pierman, SVP of product strategy – MySpace has always been about openness and letting users do whatever they want to do. And OS is letting developers to do what they want to do including innovation and participate in a bigger community. We’re seeing that OS allows developers to continue to use HTML/JS knowledge to push into this new methodology. Our dev site has launched and we’ve let 2 companies in the first round and today thousands of developers are writing applications for MySpace and for OpenSocial containers. And these apps are becoming full features. Pimps Picnik.  We are very excited about OpenSocial and becomes the defacto standard for app development.

1:06 – Joe Krauss – Director Product Mgt - last quarter we announced OS – it provides a common API that can let developers run on other social networks – pimps iLike. Developers win because it lets them hit more customers with limited work. OpenSocial reaches over 200 million users today. If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. The strength of OS lies in the community. Yahoo/MyS/Google and the entire OpenSocial community are creating the Foundation. It will make sure OS is alway free and no one party has undue influence. Foundation setup in the next 90 days, and Y/MYS/G have agreed to a non-assertion patent covenants. It means that developers and container partners will remain free. In the spirit of openess, all documents can be found on the opensocial.org web site and it will become the main hub for everything related.

1:05 – Wade Chambers – VP Platforms – We will support the OS specification – this is in line with Yahoo’s supporting of open standards and platforms. We believe that common sets of tools are benefit to the developer community at large. We also believe this is yet another way to complement the set of tools we already provide.  We see OS as a rapidly supportive environment. We see a more social Web where Yahoo and others have the chance to play with users online. Today we will not speak about any specific usages on Yahoo.

1:03 – The man said the names very quickly but included are Wade Chambers, Yahoo - David Glazer/Joe Krauss – Google and a MySpace rep 

1:00 – still on hold – why can’t these calls ever start on time? :)

Yahoo has announced this morning that they have joined the OpenSocial Movement, created and run by Google. I don’t get it – Yahoo was just starting to appear to have some legs as they are fighting the Microsoft takeover and yet they throw in the cards and join Google? Here is our simple OpenSocial overview.

The new crew has also announced plans to create the OpenSocial Foundation. From Yahoo, "The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction."

Caroline McCarthy at CNET was able to grab a quote from Facebook. Facebook is not part of OpenSocial as they created their own developer platform last year.

"As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation," a statement from the company read. "The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience."

There is a call scheduled at 1pm today to discuss the announcement and as (almost) always, we will cover the call live. Be here at 1pm Eastern for the goodies.

MySpace will be launching their new developer platform on Tuesday morning. Intially the developer site will include sample code, forums, guidebooks along with a developer blog will be available.

There are three APIs available immediately: OpenSocial with MySpace Extensions, REST API and a variety of Action Scripts. The idea with the action scripts is simple – they are premade functions that you can tie into widgets within MySpace. Unlike the Facebook platform, the MySpace Platform won’t launch with any premium partners; instead everyone gets a fair shot at success (or as fair as possible).

Adam Ostrow from Mashable has additional details regarding the launch and the privacy options and revenue model that MySpace will utilize. He notes regarding the revenue model, "In terms of monetization, the revenue share hinted at last week won’t be available initially. Instead, developers will be able to control 100% of ads on their "canvas page," where most of the main functions of applications will live. In the future, developers will be able to utilize the same tools currently being beta tested by MySpace, which allow advertisers to place "hyper targeted ads" based on user’s profile characteristics."

On the privacy side, Ostrow notes, "On the privacy side, we now know that MySpace will be applying the same privacy controls users currently have for their profiles to applications, meaning that apps will have access only to data that user’s have already made available." There will also be a sanitization process to verify that no hanky panky will take place regarding the JavaScript code inside the apps.

Since the MySpace Platform is built on OpenSocial, applications will be able to be magically transferred over to other OpenSocial partners including Bebo, hi5, and LinkedIn. This could make the MySpace Platform very attractive to developers. NY-based KickApps also supports OpenSocial. If I see one poke application on Tuesday, all bets are off.

Social networking site hi5 has launched two new music apps today using OpenSocial through partnerships with iLike and Qloud. hi5 claims more than 70 million worldwide registered members (of course no idea on active) and also notes that these are the first apps using OpenSocial on hi5.

The iLike music application will enable hi5 users to post songs and videos on their profiles. The Qloud My Music application will also now be available to the international hi5 population. By installing the My Music application, users can immediately see and legally play entire songs and videos from their complete iTunes libraries within their hi5 profile.

“We are thrilled to offer artists and fans the ability to connect on hi5, a massive social networking site,” said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike. “Artists can now post songs and videos once via iLike’s Universal Artist Dashboard and reach a potential additional audience of more than 70 million music fans.”

I can only assume that as OpenSocial apps are built on the various social networking platforms, that we will see more and more press releases.