MySpace Developer Team

• New Forum!!! "App Denied, Need Clarification"

  So if your application has been denied and you need additional clarification on what's wrong, this forum is for you!!!  Now to make sure that I can address your issues/questions as fast as I can, let's lay down some rules.  Here's what I need from you to make this forum work, and if you can't give me this...you won't be getting a Friend Request from me. :) Subject Heading 1.  Follow this format for your subject heading: "[application name] - [reason for denial]" Body of Email (in list format) 1.  App name 2.  App ID 3.  Copy and paste why your app was denied in the first place. 4.  Let me know what's unclear in step #3. Now let's lay down some courtesy rules. 1.  Because every app is different, every app is going to have a slightly different issue.  So do not ask for help on somebody else's post.  Definately feel free to offer advice or insights that you experienced, but if you have issues of your own, start a new post. 2.  Give me 48 hours, at least give me 48 before you follow up. 3.  Follow everything I listed above. Thanks! Johnny Posted May 12 2008, 05:01 PM by johnny@myspace with no comments

• more on featured apps

  Last week, there was some chatter in the blogosphere about MySpace allowing advertising on the Application Gallery.  It’s important to us that you all have accurate information about our advertising program and our commitment to supporting ALL developers and ensuring a level playing field for everyone.   MySpace is an ad supported site, and we‘re focused on balancing revenue and relevancy across all of our business units – including the MySpace developer platform. It’s common practice for developers who want to promote their applications to purchase advertising through networks on our platform or other platforms. The Featured Apps in the Application Gallery are a combination of editorial and paid placement. They are based on sponsorship and “Editor’s Picks”: apps that the MDP team thinks are really awesome. We’ve reserved a portion of the paid placements to rotate “Editor’s Picks” applications into the Featured Apps and our editorial picks will be clearly labeled as “Editor’s Picks” so as to differentiate between sponsored Featured Apps.   Our advertising programs are available for app developers to further promote their applications in the MySpace Application Gallery and the Application Gallery main page was designed to accommodate a wide variety of advertisers —everyone from the brand-driven advertisers who want to pay a premium for a fixed position (they buy the CPM programs) to the small / mid tier guys who are very performance focused (they buy the CPC programs) to the space we have reserved for the “Editors picks.  Having advertising doesn't mean we're limiting developers from building rich and engaging apps.   In addition to “Editor’s Picks”, four, 350x100 ad units are available to app developers on the Application Gallery main page and one, 540x200 ad unit is available on each Application Gallery category page.  These units are available via fixed position buys or thru performance-driven campaigns on a CPC basis.   For anyone that participates in an ad campaign, MySpace is enabling app developers to reach specific user segments across MySpace based on activity and interest information provided by users on their MySpace profile pages via an ad program known as Hypertargeting.  The Hypertargeted ad feature has been performing well, delivering up to 5x ad click thru performance for app developers who ran the same campaigns on a non-targeted basis. If you're interested in more information about the promotional programs you can contact James Hatcher at MySpace (jhatcher@myspace.com).   Advertising on the Application Gallery in no way means that MySpace will limit the functionality for developers to build rich and engaging applications. All developers have access to the same APIs via OpenSocial standards. The charts (newest, alpha, most popular, etc.) are democratic in the way they are determined and displayed and everyone from Mumbai to Moscow to Michigan is invited and encouraged to develop on MySpace -- whether you’re 18 or 114.   Finally, we’re committed to supporting developers with approved MySpace applications in their media outreach efforts to provide the best possible visibility. Here's a prior blog post on how to get involved. We have a clean feedback process – everyone has a voice and an opportunity to communicate with the developer team at MySpace, so please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.   /Kyle   Posted May 05 2008, 11:30 PM by Kyle with 4 comment(s) Filed under: gallery, featured, editor's picks, advertising

• Forum Posting Guidelines

  Greetings Developers! As we move forward on the platform and add new documentation, capabilities, and end-user features, we want to be SURE that you are heard, and that any issues are addressed in a timely manner.  The following guidelines will significantly reduce wait time for you and will make it easier for us to assist you quickly and efficiently.  As we’ve stated before, we want as many apps to go live as possible! This is a 2 way street, and we could not be successful without you! The following list includes just a few posting guidelines to make things run smoother for all of us on the MySpace Development Platform. Please take these into consideration when posting.   ·         Read the BLOGS! These blogs contain great information. We post them for a reason, and many issues can be addressed by reading them. ·         Read the FAQ.  We are working on updating it, and realize some information may be out of date.  In the meantime, it still has a lot of useful information. ·         Subscribe to TWITTER: http://twitter.com/MySpaceDevTeam Many major issues and fixes are posted here. ·         Check out our IRC chatroom! We have folks that frequent IRC as well.  Some may be available to answer immediate questions! http://developer.myspace.com/Community/forums/p/330/1168.aspx ·         Search the forums before you create a new thread.  Some of these issues have been addressed, and work-arounds have been posted.  Creating a new thread just makes the forums more “BUZY” and it’s harder to weed through to find any NEW issues that may arise. ·         Keep threads in their respective forums. We do have MS devs that frequent them regularly, looking for issues, addressing them and/or posting work-arounds. If your posts are all over topics that are not related to your issue, then we are delayed while finding them, and you are delayed in assisting your app to go LIVE. ·         Do not DUPLICATE your posts across multiple forums.  This does not address the issue any faster, and it makes it harder for us forum folks to weed through dupes to find other issues. ·         If you are having a problem with a specific application, please post the APP ID or LINK.  Many of you come to these forums, post, and then do not return for quite awhile.  It’s hard to address specific issues; if we do not know specifically the application that is giving you trouble.  Posting the application link or ID will significantly cut down your waiting time. ·         Please keep advertising to the OFF TOPIC forums. We realize you want to promote, and that’s why we have the Brag and Boast, Meet and Greet, and Grab bag forums. Posting these things in other forums, again, makes it harder for us to track down the real issues. You can always feel free to message us directly at if you feel your specific has not been addressed. Thanks again, to everyone who participates in these forums. Our folks do love to play with your new creations, and we do! All the time!  This is a very new and exciting time for MySpace! We love working with ya’ll and appreciate the hard work you put into these apps.  Rhonda "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney Posted Apr 30 2008, 11:08 PM by rondata@myspace with 4 comment(s)

• Publishing App Changes

  Your application changes are no longer published live immediately.  This gives you the ability to iterate your app and explicitly publish changes.  Many of you have created a separate development version of your app.  You no longer have to do that.  As the developer of the app you always have a view into the development version of your surface.  When you are confident in your changes, you must explicitly click "Publish Changes" in My Apps.  Your changes will then be published to the live version and installed users after a short waiting period.  You may still make changes to your app during this period and you do not have to explicitly publish those new changes at that time and the waiting period is not reset.  However, we will be giving you the ability to un-publish changes that have not gone live yet in case you change your mind. I know many of you aren't happy about a waiting period for changes to go live, no matter how short the length, but it also allows us to spot check changes.  We will be experimenting with lowering the waiting period dependent on your app statistics including the length of time it has been live and it's usage, etc.  Please provide us feedback; we really want to strike the right balance of developer capability and security.  We believe the short waiting period until published changes go live is reasonable, but our ears are open. ~Paul Posted Apr 28 2008, 12:25 PM by Paul with 10 comment(s)

• out of beta!

  Today we officially launched the Apps Gallery on MySpace! As you know, the Gallery has been out for a little more than a month, but we now have links pointing to it from various places on the site, including "Apps" links in the top menu across MySpace and on MySpace.com Here's a quick pic to highlight:                               Mainly what this means to you guys is more traffic! As promised, we're increasing promotion and visibility of apps on MySpace, with more users and more views across the board. Additionally, we're now featuring apps on the Gallery "splash" page. We'll be posting more about this shortly, but if you'd like to participate or get more info in meantime, please send an email to developerRelations@myspace.com, subject: FEATURE /Kyle  Posted Apr 25 2008, 12:52 AM by Kyle with no comments Filed under: launch, links, beta, featured

• Meet the Bloggers!

  Just a little introduction in to who we are! I know many of you would love to put names with faces, so here we are @your service! http://developer.myspace.com/community/myspace/meetthebloggers.aspx Rhonda   Posted Apr 17 2008, 05:18 PM by rondata@myspace with no comments

• Introducing our New Applications Specialist……….

  Please welcome the newest MDP Team member, John Nuygen (user name: Johnny@myspace) John is the first of several new MDP members who are coming online! John is joining us from San Francisco and spends his time being the Application Specialist for MDP and a champion hula hoopist. Please welcome John to our Developer Forums! I know that you’re as excited as we are to have the additional resource and expertise John brings with him to the MDP team!   Rhonda “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” - Walt Disney Posted Apr 15 2008, 01:12 PM by rondata@myspace with 4 comment(s)

• Ch Changes

  You've probably noticed lots of changes on MDP in the last week or so. I want to quickly highlight and explain these changes and how they fit with our ongoing plans for MDP.   "Post To" capabilities   The most significant change last week was the addition of messaging and posting functionality that we call "Post To". In brief, Post To enables your apps to provide content to users -- anything from text, to markup, to media -- and allows them to post it in a bulletin or blog, save it to their own profile, or send it to a friend in a MySpace message or comment. Here's a great blog post by Donny Mack from our Seattle team that explains this new functionality in detail:  introducing Post To   We have two main goals with Post To: give MySpace users more ways to connect and express themselves, and give developers more ways to spread the word about your apps. We think these goals are directly aligned, and here's why. The best way for your apps to grow in popularity is by really engaging users and providing them with cool content that they also want their friends to see. Post To lets you do so using the tools that MySpace members are already familiar with. Now you can let your users brag about their high scores in a bulletin post or challenge a friend to beat that score in a message. But remember that MySpace is all about profiles and self-expression, so I encourage you to provide your users with cool stuff to post in their blogs and profiles or to drop in a comment . . . those are great ways for your apps to spread.   We've already gotten a lot of good questions/feedback about Post To, and we will be getting back with more specific info on questions like using Post To from the RESTful API and on the profile and UHP views. I'd like to quickly address one issue, though, which is whether we will allow messaging/posting to multiple recipients. Firstly, Post To does support MySpace bulletins, which is a great way to let users "broadcast" a message about your app. Messages, however, can only be sent to one user at a time on MySpace. We are looking at allowing multiple message recipients in the future, but need to strike a balance between convenience and flooding inboxes. We are also developing new app-specific messaging capabilities - more on that in coming weeks.   Applications Module on UHP Have you noticed more users installing your apps? Another change last week was that the "Applications" module on Users' Home Pages now appears for ALL users. Previously, it had only appeared after a user installed an app. Here's how the module looks for users who don't have any apps:       You might not think such a small module would drive a lot of traffic, but that's the power of MySpace! We've already seen a large increase in views and installs in the gallery, and this is just another step in the increasing visibility of the Apps platform on MySpace.   Default sorts in the Apps Gallery The final big change we made last week was that we modified the default sort/view in the Apps Gallery from most installs to most recent submissions. We did this for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted to give MySpace users more variety in the apps they see when the come to the gallery. Second, we wanted to give newer apps more exposure and opportunities, which is definitely part of our mission to ensure that MDP provides a level playing field for all developers. We will likely be changing the default sorts frequently as we roll out new sorts and views on the gallery - some in the coming weeks! Stay tuned for continued updates. /Kyle                        Posted Apr 14 2008, 07:27 PM by Kyle with 4 comment(s)

• Important REST API Code Update

  We have recently rolled out an important code change that may be causing 401s in server to server requests to the REST API.  Server to server requests to http://api.msappspace.com will result in a 401 now.  The domain must be http://api.myspace.com.  The former domain is to be used for user-agent to api requests and the latter is only for server to server OAuth signed requests.   Our own API tool has not been changed to reflect this, but will be soon. We apologize for the invconvenience, but this was a necessary security change. Posted Apr 03 2008, 02:03 PM by Paul with 9 comment(s)

• OpenSocial Hackathon: Sunday, 6th of April (in London)

  For those of you wo attended the MySpace Developer Platform launch event in London, we wanted to let you know about an upcoming OpenSocial hackathon event also in London. This Sunday, the 6th of April, come jump into some code and learn how to get OpenSocail apps up and running on MySpace and other containers. Engineers from MySpace and Google will be on hand to help walk through code examples, and help you build your applications. This is a great opportunity to get started building OpenSocial applications.  BT has graciously volunteered to host this event at BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street. London EC1A 7AJ, just across from St. Paul's tube station, and we hope to see you there The event will start at 11am and go as long as people can still type.  The event is totally free and of course, and of course there will also be sufficient quantities of beer and pizza. If you're interested, please RSVP using the following form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pcWev5qKc2OAGVt4L8UZCXQ Looking forward to seeing you there! mitch Posted Apr 03 2008, 02:04 PM by ♣Mitch McAlister♣ with 3 comment(s) Filed under: hackathon, devJAM, OpenSocial, london

• Apps in Friend Subscriptions!

  Things have been going very well with the Apps Gallery since we beta launched on March 13th. There are already hundreds of apps in the Gallery, with exposure to hundreds of thousands of MySpace members. We're now beginning the process of increasing exposure of the Gallery - and your apps! - to the wider MySpace community. The first step in this process is getting apps into Friend Subscriptions. If you're not familiar with Friend Subscriptions, it's a key feature on user's home pages that lets users see what their friends have been doing: posting pictures and videos, updating their profiles and blogs, and now, adding applications!  Here's an example of what users see when a friend adds an application: When a user clicks on the app name or picture, they're taken to the app profile so that they can find out more and add the app themselves if they like. This is a great way for MySpace members to discover cool new applications and for you guys to "get the word out" about your apps, and the coolest thing is you don't have to do anything: apps will start showing up automatically in users' Friend Subscriptions as they're added. As mentioned, this is just the first of many enhancements coming down the road. We're working hard on new stuff for both "User" and "Developer" facing sides of the platform. One of the next steps will be adding communications capabilities into the container - more on that next week /Kyle Posted Apr 02 2008, 10:40 AM by Kyle with 7 comment(s) Filed under: updates, viral, feed

• Press For Your Apps!

  We know there are a lot of developers out there who are eager to start conducting their own PR activities to get the word out about the applications that they are launching on MySpace.  Now that we have rolled out the second phase of the application development platform, and the Application Gallery is live, we are ready to work with everyone to help them effectively time their outreach efforts. Starting tomorrow, April 2, we will begin supporting developers with approved MySpace applications in their press release efforts.  We’d like to make these announcements in an organized way to provide our developers with the best possible visibility and not flood the media with 100 press releases on the same day – that just wouldn’t be helpful to anyone. If you would like to develop and distribute a joint MySpace/[Your Application or company] press release, please drop us an email at myspace@sparkpr.com.  We will provide you with an approved MySpace press release template, and work with you to determine the best possible timing. To streamline the process a bit, it would be helpful if you could answer the following questions in your email: 1.       When did/does your application launch on the MySpace Application Gallery? 2.       What date do you want to distribute your press release? 3.       Describe your application, what does it bring to MySpace Users that is new and innovative? (No more than 150 words, please) 4.       Who is the best contact for our PR team to partner with?  What is their contact information? Once we receive this information from you, we will be in touch to discuss timing and also give you further insight into the press release approval process. Please note that this is on a first come, first served basis, so we’ll be putting together a press release distribution schedule based on the responses we receive. Thanks for your patience, and we are looking forward to doing great things with you. /Kyle   Posted Apr 01 2008, 10:10 PM by Kyle with no comments

• Thanks to our Developers, and a Few Reminders :)

  Greetings Developers!   I just wanted to thank everyone who participates in the forums.  I have noticed that many of you have issues that do have work-arounds and many of you get trapped when you don’t read or see them.   My suggestions are this: Search the forums before you create a new post.  I’ve seen so many posts that have multiple threads for the same issues.  They are very hard to track that way.  Please look at the forum titles and post in the correct forum. You may find many of your answers are already there! We do have specific threads for multi-user affecting issues; try to keep your posts in those threads. READ THE BLOGS! We post these for a reason!  We are still beta, keep that in mind.   If you’ve noticed, we have specific forums for makeRequest, OpenSocial Container, Data Store, App XML, and even bugs.  We have developers who frequent these forums as they can, and post solutions and answer questions.   Again, we couldn’t be successful without you guys! It makes me so happy when I see you all get apps approved and nothing makes me happier then helping you guys!  We want as many apps live as possible! The more the better!  We have a reference section which includes lots of documentation, and there is more to come.  Our site map can take you wherever you want to go. I know it’s a bit rough on the weekends, but we are always here for you.     Thanks again for all who participate here.  It is rewarding to see developers helping other developers and, and watching the excitement build when we see and play with your awesome new apps. As Stephanie posted earlier, we have a LOT of fun with them!   Rhonda MDP-Content Team| Information Culture Group    “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” - Walt Disney   Posted Mar 28 2008, 06:48 PM by rondata@myspace with 3 comment(s)

• Some Good, Some Bad, and Some Suuuuuper Cookies

  One week in and we have one hundred something apps in the gallery, thousands of developers playing around, and I don’t know how many MySpace members discovering this new product we have. Applications are taking off, and I don’t think I can even express in words how excited we are. We’re quite selfishly excited for ourselves – yay we did it! – but we’re also extremely excited by all of the developers out there. We told everyone that we were making a fair platform, where every application would have the same chance to succeed, and I truly think we did it. Yes, I’m patting myself on the back. Sorry. But that’s not to say that we haven’t had our problems over the last week. What seemed to be our largest problem was the application approval process itself. While we did approve (or not approve) a significant number of applications for the correct reasons, the emails developers were receiving were not clear…assuming they received the emails at all. There was another problem where, due to limitations of our tool, we would truly see applications as broken when they in fact were not. Anyone with an iframed application who was not approved over the weekend should reapply now. We also have a bug in our system where we do not see icons or descriptions for anyone who has a culture set to anything other than US/English. We require an icon and description for admission to the gallery, so all those apps were being turned down. We are working on fixing the bug as soon as possible, but until then, please make sure your culture is US/English. And today we had a few glitches which you may or may not have noticed, which were ultimately caused by the fact that we have a lot of people reviewing content on MySpace. There are worse problems to have, and this one has been resolved as well. I’m scared to write that things seem to be running smoothly, but…they kinda are. We’ve figured out what was going on with the deleted profiles, the people losing developer access, the applications switching to suspended…and none of it should happen anymore. If you do happen to have a problem accessing your profile or application, message me your information and we’ll get it fixed. Now it’s time to see what’s next. You know, there’s ALWAYS something next. But we’ve made it past this part, and I’m going to go play with applications. Because at the end of it all, this is all about the applications. So to get back to the applications….I like Super Fortune Cookie (it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s fortune cookie…..duh duh duh), Honesty Box, Graffiti, Pokey and TwitterSync. What apps are your favorites? - Stephanie Posted Mar 20 2008, 10:10 AM by StephanieBamBam@MySpace with 7 comment(s)

• App App App Approvals

  In the five days that the MySpace Developer Platform has been live we've already had hundreds of cool applications published in the Apps Gallery.  We really appreciate the hard work and talent going into your apps! As you know, all applications must be reviewed by MySpace before they are published to the Apps Gallery and become available to MySpace members. We're gotten feedback that some of you have questions about or experienced difficulties with the approval process. Here are the issues we've heard about and what we're doing to address them: Some apps have been improperly marked as "Suspended" prior to being approved This was the result of an problem  in our app approval flow that will be changed shortly. If your app is not approved it will be marked as "Changes Required" and you will have the ability to make changes and resubmit.  Reasons for not approving an app were not clearly communicated We will be adding a "notes" field directly to the "MyApps" view of your applications, as well as making our emails clearer and more specific. Additionally, we'll be adding more detail to our Application Guidelines to clarify some questions that have arisen Apps remain "Pending" longer than expected Tons of great apps have been submitted and we're reviewing around the clock! We are adding more staff as well as improving the efficiency of our review processes.  We're also adding more status indicators to let you know what's going on I hope these changes will address any questions or problems you may have had about getting your apps into the gallery. We're committed to providing both developers and end-users with a good experience, and the review process is an important part of growing a healthy ecosystem.  Please keep the feedback coming so we make this process better for everyone.  Posted Mar 18 2008, 12:48 PM by Kyle with 8 comment(s) Filed under: approval, guidelines, suspended