We've just launched the new Myspace, designed to satisfy and showcase
what we're all into. Games are more of a focus now - our new site makes it
easier for users to discover games and for you to grow and engage with your
audience. With the new and improved Myspace comes many changes, and we want to
make sure you understand all the improvements we've made to games.
LIVE WEBCAST - Thursday, November 4, 2010
Please join our live webcast to get a personal introduction from Mike
Macadaan, our VP of User Experience & Design, to the new Myspace. I'll also
walk you through the changes to games and how they will positively impact
developers.
Thursday, November 04, 2010, 3:00
- 4:00 PM PDT
Details found at http://myspacedeveloperplatform.eventbrite.com and you can
join the event directly here.
We've
recently made strides in providing developers new app viral features to make it easier to grow on
Myspace. These improvements include easier ways to share gaming content into the
stream, which has
quickly accounted for 10-20% of new installs per day for some games. Some developers have found a 65 - 70%
acceptance rate on friend requests sent from within a game using our in-game friending API, and there's also a Requests API for users to now send gifts
and/or invites to friends.
Along
with these recent updates, the new Myspace brings even more improvements to
games. Here are some of the highlights to games you can expect with the new
site:
My Games
Page
My Games
is a new dashboard-like page for users to easily manage all their games' content
and settings. Each game has its own detail page where a user can take action on
all of their invites, requests and notifications related to that game.
New My Games page:

New game detail page:
We've
added more social hooks into the site like displaying users' friends who play a
game, and a list of the games that the users' top friends play. Thumbnails of
friends will be shown to encourage users to try new games or re-engage with a
favorite.
Games your
friends play:

Friends who play this game:
Growing
your audience
With the
new Myspace there's increased site-wide cross promotion of recommended games to
help you grow your audience. We'll be recommending games based on a user's
social graph, trending games, and editorially chosen games.
There's a
new, persistent global navigation and footer for users to easily re-engage with
their games. The new navigation bar is slimmer (trimmed from 242px to 170px) to
give more vertical space on the game canvas page.
Note: this may affect your game if
you've programmed it to load on the page by hiding the global navigation bar,
so check to make sure your games display properly!
Users'
notifications are now conveniently displayed in a new, persistent Notifications
dropdown in the global navigation bar. The My Stuff dropdown in the global
navigation bar also links to users' most recent three games, making it very
visual by including thumbnails. A separate Requests dropdown displays a user's
game invites and will soon include their requests. Users will now be able to
easily manage all these updates wherever they are on the site.
Global ‘My Stuff' Navigation:
Global ‘Requests' Navigation:

Global ‘Notifications' Navigation:

Windowless
mode (WMODE)
For those
running Flash games/apps, windowless mode should be set to opaque or transparent to
avoid your game from overlapping with the persistent Global Navigation Bar or
footer.
New
RESTful URLs
Myspace is
moving towards RESTful URLs around the site. Notably, this means that game
canvas pages will move from http://profile.myspace.com/Modules/Applications/Pages/Canvas.aspx?appId=<appID> to www.myspace.com/games/play/<appID>. Current canvas URLs will be
automatically redirected to the new RESTful URLs, however we advise you to make
this change in your code as well when possible.
This change
will keep the canvas URL structure consistent with the rest of the site, and we
believe it will also help with SEO. Plus, it makes the URLs easier to remember!
Again, no
need to do anything on your end, we'll continue to redirect the old URL string
to the new version. So REST up because big things are coming...
Sitewide
traffic
Games is
a central part of our strategy, and we want to continue to help you grow and
engage your users. Given
the massive changes to the site we anticipate traffic patterns to be irregular
in the short term. Please
do not be alarmed if your games activity fluctuates during this time. We'd like to work closely with you
to ensure the transition is smooth.
Access the new site
Sign up
to access the new site here: http://www.myspace.com/pages/DeveloperPreview
Check out more info about what the new site
means for our users here:
http://www.myspace.com/newmyspace and let us know your opinions, we'd love to
hear what you think of the new site.