Happy holidays! As an early present I'm pleased to report that we've released a bunch of new capabilities that should really help users engage with your apps on MDP. First up is App Invites: previously when users added apps via an invitation, the invite disappeared and users were presented with a link to the app. Now, users are immediately taken to the app when they accept invites. We got lots of requests for this change, and expect it will make it clearer and easier for people to start using the applications their friends have recommended

We're also releasing today the first stages of our Open Canvas implementation. As we've discussed previously, Open Canvas allows MySpace members to use an app canvas page prior to explicitly adding the app. You can read full details on how Open Canvas works, but the point I want to emphasize is that this capability is entirely optional. Users can still add and interact with your applications entirely as before, but you now have more options for engaging with users prior to installation. We're excited to see creative implementations of Open Canvas and look forward to feedback from you guys on further development.

Finally, I also have good news on App Activities. Several weeks ago we released Custom App Activities, a new capability on MDP that allows apps to raise events, including text, links, and media, that appear in Friend Updates on members' home pages. At that time we limited the service to developers of an app in order to allow you guys to test out the functionality in advance and help us work out any bugs. As of today we've opened up the service to allow your apps to raise events for all users!

Learn how to create and publish activity templates.

Activities are a great way to deepen engagement. Raising events allows users to broadcast to their friends all the cool things they're doing on your apps, from winning a hand at poker, to rating a new movie or completing a quiz. Like all user-to-user communications on MDP, each event must be approved by the initiating user. We feel this is the best way to balance message volume, rather than relying on black-box quotas or other filtering systems.

Here's an example of an approval modal for an activity raised by an application and the resulting event in a friends Updates:

The MDP team has worked really hard to get these features out before the holidays, and we hope this rings in the new year on a good note for everyone.

Happy New Year!

/kyle