MySpace Developer Team : Yahoo

NOTABLE MUSING – OpenID, OAuth, and User Experience

Allen — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:53:00 GMT

I believe OpenID is turning the corner into the ‘mainstream’. More importantly, I believe the “Open Stack” is starting to blossom here at MySpace!

[Photo Credit: John McCrea]

While I’ve been intrigued with OpenID since I first saw it added to LiveJournal in 2005, I never quite knew how it would “cross-over” into the mass adoption. I was always concerned by the obvious problem I refer to as the OpenID ‘chicken-or-the-egg’ problem (a.k.a. ‘provider-or-the-consumer’). Obviously, the correct answer – strive to be both!

Let me be the first to probably say it out loud in plain English – it’s often feels easier for the businesses implementing OpenID to start by being a provider.

This is based on two things:

Companies are just evolving from the former Internet era where we had ‘My Network and your Network versus their Network’ – now we are quickly moving into the ‘Cloud’. We are seeing network walls and walled gardens begin to open
Most companies believe their brand is the strongest with the largest reach therefore it’s best to be the provider. This is perfectly ok at this stage because there will be, when it makes sense, a natural distribution of consumers, providers, and both. As OpenID becomes mainstream we will see sites use OpenID with the methods that fit their particular business needs.

OpenID and OAuth are not only evolving in code, but also in User Experience (a.k.a. ease of use). Thanks to Yahoo, Google, Plaxo, and many others (including our very own Max Engel) there was major progress on the cognitive usage patterns of using OpenID and OAuth. Yahoo hosted the OpenID/OAuth UX Summit last week at their main campus - Thank you Yahoo!

You can also watch the recap of the live blogging during the "OpenID / OAuth UX Summit"

John McCrea, the author of the live blog above, works at Plaxo, helping to pioneer “Open Stack” thru his work co-authoring the Portable Contacts specification, and co-hosts a technology show -- thesocialweb.tv.
John was also a guest journalist on TechCrunch this week.

You can read his GREAT post here

You can also watch “TheSocialWeb” TV episode about the UX Summit below

Please make sure you read the two OpenID Usability Studies from Yahoo and Google.

This week Chris Messina (also a co-host on thesocialweb.tv) was the first to notice the progress MySpace is making on our own implementation of OpenID.

As we approach the 1st Birthday of OpenSocial it’s important to reflect on all the progress and excitement I’ve seen at MySpace to make sure we provide our large platform to help not only our users, but the developer community to evolve our platform. MySpace is using it’s stable of “Open Stack” technologies including OpenSocial, OAuth, OpenID, Microformats (including XFN), XDRS, Portable Contacts to build a robust Developer Platform that extends our “social affiliation” to 3rd party sites using Data Availability.

You can see blog post David Recordon (also a co-host of thesocialweb.tv) made on September 27th, 2008 One of these isn't quite like the others... that many companies are adopting the "Open Stack". From reading's John McCrea's TechCrunch article you can also see that progress is being made between "Open Stack" participants and those building a simlary but proprietary stack.

[Image Credit: David Recordon]

The most exciting part for me is seeing several companies trying similar concepts some in agreement and some in contrast, but knowing together we are advancing the over all social web

In my personal opinion, I believe we need to work hard to make sure it continues to get easier to program the web. We have a chance to make sure there isn’t a huge switching cost in social and cloud computing. I’m constantly amazed at the level of collaboration going to advance this cause - TOGETHER!

SAVE-THE-DATE: THUR, NOV 13th, 2008 – MySpace San Francisco Office – OpenSocial - 1st Birthday Celebration

Allen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:13:00 GMT

OCCASION: OpenSocial's First Birthday!
DATE: Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at the MySpace San Francisco Offices

Hard to believe, but OpenSocial is just a few weeks shy of being a full year old! To celebrate, we're getting together to look back on the great progress we've all made in the past year and to discuss where we should take OpenSocial next.

And of course, we'll eat birthday cake!!!

You're invited! The event, which is free and open to anyone, will be on Thursday, November 13th, and is being hosted in San Francisco at MySpace's SOMA office.
Developers, containers, and API designers alike have done a lot, even since the OpenSocial Summit in May, and we're excited about showcasing the cool stuff developers have done, talk about recent container launches, and discuss the future evolution of the spec.

The day will include:

- Application developers talking about their experience developing with OpenSocial Discussions and demos of the latest spec proposals (e.g. OpenSocial Templates)
- Updates from OpenSocial containers such as MySpace, Yahoo!, orkut and iGoogle
- Hacking! Yes, lots of time for programming with numerous experts on hand.
- Partying! I already mentioned birthday cake, right?

We'll provide food, drink, and the Hi-Fidelity Internets (a.k.a. Wi-Fi). Doors will open at 10 am, and we'll finish off in the evening with a proper birthday party and social hour, so bring your party hat and get ready to code.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for the event, please visit the OpenSocial community forum.

If you're going to be joining us, please help us plan by RSVP'ing for the event!

Posted by Allen Hurff, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

Other Links: Google's OpenSocial - 1st Birthday Celebration Post

OpenSocial Foundation: Open for Collaboration

Allen — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:50:00 GMT

MySpace is excited to officially announce the OpenSocial Foundation. The OpenSocial Foundation will ensure that OpenSocial can be used openly and at no cost now and into the future.

It is very important that the MySpace Developer Platform ecosystem can continue to innovate and collaborate in a communal and productive environment. The OpenSocial Foundation helps to foster such an environment.

You can visit the OpenSocial Foundation Website to learn more now. For additional information, you can also visit our OpenSocial Foundation FAQ.

If you’d like to learn more or collaborate with other members you can use the following useful links:

MySpace Forums / OpenSocial Container
MySpace Forums / Restful APIs
Google Groups / OpenSocial Spec
OpenSocial Foundation / OpenSocial Spec 0.8

We are also excited to announce the initial Board of Directors:

•    Anil Dharni, hi5
•    David Glazer, Google
•    Joe Greenstein, Flixster
•   Allen Hurff, MySpace
•    Sam Pullara, Yahoo!

If you'd like to get involved in the nomination and election process for the two community board seats, please fill out this quick application to join the OpenSocial Foundation (it's free), and go ahead and submit nominations for those seats. If you have suggestions, questions, or comments, please visit the new OpenSocial community discussion group.