MySpace Developer Team News and Announcements : OpenID

Simplified off-site login with Myspace ID

Chris Cole — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:52:00 GMT

We're always moving to bring more value and improve the experience of working with the Myspace Developer Platform to you, our developers. As we've upgraded our APIs to support OAuth 2.0 we've also been looking at the experience of developing experiences that leverage the Myspace platform outside the walls of Myspace.

The current off-site login tools, collectively known as Myspace ID, are just too complicated and have too many similar options. Currently we support two different off-site login mechanisms through MySpace ID and our MySpace ID SDKs:

OAuth Login
OpenID Login

As we roll out our OAuth 2.0 support, that's going to add a third login option - OAuth 2.0 client login. Time and again our developers have shown us that what they want is to validate users in order to leverage their social graph data through our rich API catalog. The best solution to this problem is OAuth Login. In order to focus on delivering the best experience to our developers, we're going to phase out support for OpenID login from Myspace ID so we can focus solely on OAuth login solutions moving forward.

OpenID support will continue to function for a time period in order to allow our developers time to transition to using OAuth login. If you are currently using one of the Myspace ID SDKs, this should be a relatively simple matter; the SDKs currently include support for both OAuth login and OpenID login. In the coming months we will be removing OpenID support from the SDKs in order to eliminate confusion and retiring OpenID support.

In the mean time, you are encouraged to explore and transition to OAuth login, enjoy the simpler implementation, cleaner interface, and mobile device support. Happy coding!

Digsby gets an upgrade and adds MySpaceID

Brandon Black — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:43:00 GMT

We’re excited to let everyone know that our friends over at Digsby just released a new version of their feature-rich, but incredibly lightweight all-purpose chat client yesterday which now includes an incredibly note-worthy implementation of MySpaceID.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Digsby is a desktop application that allows you to simultaneously use all your favorite IM clients (AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, MSN, Jabber, ICQ) and keep track of your email inbox all in once place. Digsby also provides some very handy integration with all your favorite social networks where you can keep track of what all of your friends are doing and receive notifications straight to your desktop. Additionally, through the use of your Digsby.com account, Digsby allows you to organize your friend lists and take all your settings and preferences with you to any computer you are using.

Digsby's newest release includes a ton of useful new features, here are just a few of them:

MySpaceID and Activity Stream - Powered by the MySpaceID APIs and open standards including OpenID and OAuth, you can now view your entire activity stream, update your status, receive messages and notifications from MySpace, and much more straight to your desktop using Digsby. The seamless integration between Digsby and MySpace allows you to do much of what you can do on MySpace's website, including browsing photos straight from the activity stream. This is a great example of how any developer can add incredibly rich social networking features to their application quickly and easily using MySpaceID.

Global Status - A new status update dialog that allows you to set your status across all your social networks and Twitter in addition to all your instant messaging networks. This new dialog for setting your global status includes spell checking and the ability to easily share links and photos with others directly from your status.

Digs.by (URL Shortening) - Along side the new global status update dialog that was introduced with this latest release, Digsby is adding a URL shortening service specifically for Digsby users. This new URL shortening service will serve all links from http://digs.by and in the future the team at Digsby plans to provide history, tracking, and statistical information to this URL shortening service.

Great work by the Digsby development team! We can't wait to see what cool features they come up with next.

What is MySpaceID? Watch a video explaining it here.
To learn more about integrating MySpaceID into your website or application, click here.
To learn more about Digsby, please visit http://www.digsby.com
To download the latest version of Digsby, please click here.

New Features for MySpaceID Live!

Donny Mack (DM) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:24:00 GMT

Greetings Developers!

Today the MySpace Open Platform team launched new functionality for MySpaceID and a remarkably useful set of MySpace ID SDKs. Other key updates in the release include fixes for Custom parameters on the callback function. Additionally, today MySpace announced the limited testing of a MySpaceID implementation on the Yahoo! homepage.

New MySpaceID Features:

Activity Stream from Web sites using MySpaceID
MySpace Members' activities on MySpaceID-enabled Web sites can now be streamed to any site on the Web -- increasing engagement on partner sites. Partner sites can filter MySpace Members' activities by the activity feed type: photos, events, music, etc. For example, a photo-sharing site could choose to display activities specific to photo uploading, photo tagging, and photo album creation. We are currently Beta testing, but will have this API available to everyone soon.

Easy authentication using OAuth and OpenID
Integration of both OAuth and OpenID into MySpaceID enables MySpace Members to securely login to MySpaceID-enabled Web sites using their MySpace credentials. The combination of OAuth and OpenID allows MySpace Members to bring their MySpace identity with them, solving the problem of username and password fatigue.

New Application Developer Workflow
The modified MySpace Developer Workflow ("Create App") streamlines the process of building and configuring an application. Especially notable is its dedicated path for MySpaceID application development, which provides developers with “key” data needed to implement secure OAuth access tokens.

To begin, click the Build button in the blue navigation bar.

MySpaceID SDKs - Developer toolkits demonstrate the "Open Stack" approach
MySpace introduces the Beta release of its MySpaceID SDKs for MySpace Open Platform Developers. Developers have been clamoring for toolkits and code examples for months, and they will undoubtedly be very excited about this SDK release, which is based on completely open Web standards. The client libraries are initially being released in PHP, Python, Ruby, .NET and Java, with additional libraries planned in the future for Cocoa and Android.

See the MySpaceID SDK page for an introduction and links to all SDK resources and documentation.

See the MySpaceID documentation for more information.

MySpaceID on the Yahoo! Homepage
The MySpace application is one of several new apps that Yahoo! recently began testing as part of its new Yahoo! homepage. The application enables users to check-in and keep up to date with the information and people they care about most. The launch marks a significant milestone for MySpaceID.

“The MySpace App, currently in testing on the new Yahoo! homepage, adds new social functionality into the Yahoo! experience by using MySpaceID to connect Yahoo! users to their MySpace network,” said Jason Oberfest, general manager of the MySpace Open Platform. "By logging into MySpace from the new App right on the Yahoo! homepage, users get quick access to their MySpace friend updates, friend requests, and can manage their MySpace status, mood and more – all while catching up on their other activities on Yahoo!” he explains. “By working with Yahoo! we have been able to take a big step forward in evolving the open Web. We are very pleased to be working with them.”

The new Yahoo! homepage is currently being tested by a small percentage of Yahoo! users in advance of a public beta. More information is available at: http://ycorpblog.com/2009/02/13/update-on-our-new-homepage-testing/.

With these enhancements, MySpace is the first major social network to have the full "Open Stack" implemented where information is flowing to partner Web sites based on completely open Web standards. MySpace now offers full OpenID support on every custom user URL.

MySpace is also the first major party to implement the new activity stream open specification.

A Big Week for OpenID

8BitKid — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:37:00 GMT

Today, Google announced a single sign-on solution that is powered by OpenID. This is certainly a fantastic bit of news, and comes on the heels of Microsoft's announcement of their intention to support the standard. In addition, Chris Messina wrote an excellent post yesterday on how we can overcome the usability problems that have marred OpenID to help the spec succeed, and how e-mail address support is critical to the success of the standard.

I completely agree on the importance of enabling e-mails as a valid OpenID, and believe that we should ultimately empower the user to enable the identifier he or she most strongly identifies with. At MySpace, we are uniquely positioned to work with OpenID because we have a user-base that already thinks of themselves as being represented by a URL. If you ask any MySpace user what their vanity URL is, there is a very good chance they'll know it. However, beyond us and the blogging community, most users from major OP's don't know what their URL is, even if many of them actually already possess an OpenID. That is why, even with the excitement around Microsoft becoming an OP, a user with a valid OpenID doesn't equal a user leveraging their OpenID. It is this disconnect that e-mail-based OpenID can help to alleviate. Further, we need to be flexible enough to include other identifiers that might emerge, such as cell phone numbers.

It is this eventual freedom to use the identifier you identify with as your OpenID that necessitates that the foundation take a more proactive role in marketing. It is only once the brand has been strengthened that users will understand that their URL, e-mail, or type foo identifier is something special. people know they have a credit card number, and they know who gives it to them, even if they aren't being expressly asked for their "Visa" or "Mastercard". we need that type of recognition.

With today's announcement by Google, while I am excited to see them get behind OpenID, I am troubled by some of the implications. As I indicated earlier, I am completely in favor of allowing e-mail addresses to be valid OpenID's. My concern is over the user-experience that Google is promoting for the product. The user interface they are promoting not only omits OpenID, but also is pushing e-mail address as the only identifier. While this is certainly elegant, it could potentially hurt the OpenID community by fracturing the identity provider space. E-mail-based OpenID's are great for the major mail providers, but clearly it doesn't help URL-based identity providers. I worry that this will create a rift, and also possibly make URL-based identity providers second-class citizens. As I've said before, if RP's think this is the ideal model, then, to riff on "Animal Farm", we have created a world where all OpenID's are equal, but some OpenID's are more equal then others.

This is again why it is critical that OpenID become a stronger brand, so that we can help move away from these problems. Clearly Google is doing what is best for their users; there is no question that they are proposing an elegant model. However, I do worry that if a majority of RP's decide to implement Google's recommended user experience, that those of us with URL-based identities will be left behind.

This is certainly shaping up to be an exciting couple of weeks, and am hoping that all of us, as a community, can come together to solve these fundamental problems of usability so that our users can be as excited about this technology as we all are.

MySpace Hits the Open Road

8BitKid — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:03:00 GMT

Greeting developers, of the next couple of weeks you can come hearv us talk about our open initiatives at a variety of venues:

SNAP Summit: 10/28

Max Engel: "Building on the Open Identity Stack: How to Power Your Site with the Social Web"

Digital Hollywood: 10/28

Allen Hurff: "Open Social Networking: Definition of an Industry"

Widget Summit: 11/03 - 11/04

Max Engel and Max Newbould: "MySpace Applications"

Max Engel: "Tapping Into Social Utilities"

Internet Identity Workshop: 11/10 - 11/12

A bunch of good MySpace folks

So come on out and learn about our open platform efforts!

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!

Open and On Location: TechCrunch50 and Portable Contacts Summit

8BitKid — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:04:00 GMT

Howdy all,

Next week MySpace will be on-site for the TechCrunch50 event demoing and discussing our application platform and Data Availability project. If you are planning on attending, definitely swing by our booth to get the lowdown on OpenSocial, OpenID, OAuth, and all things developer-facing from the MySpace Max's (Newbould and Engel).

Also, we are going to be hosting the Portable Contacts Summit next Thursday at our San Francisco office. Portable Contacts is an open initiative to define a common way to securely take your address book into new sites. You can find more info on the event: http://portablecontactssummit.eventbrite.com/

To get yourself ready to start playing with the new standard, check out the hackathon that SixApart is hosting the night before: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1078491

We have a lot of exciting work underway as we continue to develop and enhance our open platforms, and we are looking forward to the chance to talk more about those efforts.

Cheers, Max

OpenID, Coming to A MySpace Profile Near You

8BitKid — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:30:00 GMT

Yesterday we announced our plans to support OpenID. We are excited to be embracing this standard which will allow MySpace users to have a single-sign on solution for logging into sites across the web.

OpenID is a delegated authentication mechanism that allows a user to claim their identity through a URL. MySpace users will be able to leverage their personal profile as a way to login into many of the OpenID-enabled sites across the web.

As a developer, you will be able to implement OpenID on your site so that you can allow our users to easily login to your site without them having to create yet another username and password. Additionally, implementing OpenID will also grant you access to the literally hundreds of millions of other users who have OpenID's from a variety of other identity providers.

We are excited to be taking this next step towards empowering our users to have a portable identity, and see this as a perfect complement to the existing features of Data Availability. Stay tuned as we continue to discuss how our OpenID implementation will work and what kinds of functionality this will enable for our users and its potential for developers. MySpace is committed to taking an open, standards-based approach to our Data Availability project, and our decision to offer OpenID to our users reinforces this commitment.

- Max Engel: Product Manager, Data Availability

The Social Cloud: Early Acronyms and Terminologies

Allen — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:33:00 GMT

Wow! I remember using Spy Glass Mosaic to surf the World Wide Web. I remember what magic you can do with a little HTML and a few animated gifs (GIF 87A/89A). I remember BCP before SQL Server had DTS. I also clearly remember the entry of XHTML and XML and still feel the effects they had and are having on defining new web protocols. I could go on and on with the Acronyms and Terminologies, but I think you get the point.

I never really thought the utility I first came to know as "The Information Super Highway" was going to have a social aspect this early on. Much like a normal highway, I thought it would be a utility long before it established cognitive and social aspects. So, What are the Acronyms and Terminologies emerging in this quickly forming Social Cloud? What do they mean? How can you learn more about them?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Here are just a few Acronyms and Terminologies being actively being discussing in conjunction with the “Social Cloud”:

Acronym: XFN

XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks.

Social Cloud Type: Friend Networks

Wikipedia Definition: XHTML Friend Network

(Early) Functional Specification: XFN 1.1 relationships meta data profile

Other Information Links: General XFN Links, URLs are People, Too, XFN Getting Started

Acronym: FOAF

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

Social Cloud Type: Friend Networks

Wikipedia Definition: Fried of a Friend Network

Functional Specification: FOAF Vocabulary Specification 0.91

Other Information Links: The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) Project, So you want to foaf?, XML Watch: Finding friends with XML and RDF

Acronym: XMPP (a.k.a. MicroID)

MicroID is a lightweight identity layer for the web that enables anyone to claim verifiable ownership over content hosted anywhere on the web (social networking sites, discussion forums, blogs, etc.).

Social Cloud Type: Identification

Wikipedia Definition: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol

Functional Specification: RFC3920

Other Information Links: MicroID - Small Decentralized Verifiable Identity

Term: OpenID

OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. In short, OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

Social Cloud Type: Identification

Wikipedia Definition: OpenID

Functional Specification: OpenID 2.0 Authentication 2.0 - Final

Other Information Links: OpenID.NET, OpenID Enabled, OpenID Wiki

Term: Microformats

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

Social Cloud Type: Data Formats

Wikipedia Definition: Microformats

Further Definition: hCard, hCalendar, hReview
Other Information Links: Microformats Wiki

Some of these concepts are from the late 1990’s some are more recent. They are all still gaining traction and acceptance. Some will evolve and mutate, some won’t. New ones are sure to come along sooner than later.

Since late last year, I found myself at conferences and meet-ups discussing OpenID, MicroID, Data Portability, Online Reputation, and Social Graph Programming. We are now seeing the social plumbing get pieced together.