MySpace Developer Team News and Announcements : invites

Updates on Daily Limits for App Invites

Jamie My_____ — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:59:00 GMT

Hello pirates, ninjas, and developers... just a quick update on our efforts to limit (throttle) the number of invites a user can send via an app per day. In the original blog post, we communicated the plan was to initially limit invites that can be sent to 100 per day per user per app; and then further reduce the limit down to 40. Those changes have gone into effect (July 14th), and we have been analyzing the results.

We have confirmed this mechanism to be effective in preventing an excessive amount of invites sent by users. And, as a result, the invites conversion percentage has gone up. We are continuing to optimize this viral channel to maximize the number of invites converted into active app users. This week we set the daily limit for invites to 60 and are measuring the resulting impact. This value was chosen to provide additional headroom for this viral channel. We anticipate this limit value will be set indefinitely, and recommend all app developers to implement the sending of invites considering this limit value.

For more info on invites, check out the Invites Wiki Page.

Invites max now at 20

beriberikix — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:23:00 GMT

App invites are one of the leading drivers of growth for Apps. We've received a lot of good feedback about the recent introduction of multiple recipient invites and many developers have asked to increase the maximum amount invites one can send at a time.

In response, we're testing increasing the maximum amount of invites a member can send at a time from 10 to 20. This feature is now available in production. Check it out!

As always, please send your feedback in the comments; we really do read your responses and do our best to address them.

./bbk

Invites, Open Canvas, and Activities

Kyle Brinkman — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:18:00 GMT

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

More Information on requestShareApp / App Invites

Donny Mack (DM) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:59:00 GMT

More Information on requestShareApp

This is a follow-up on Kyle’s post “quick update on ACC” with some implementation details.

http://developer.myspace.com/community/blogs/devteam/archive/2008/06/30/quick-update-on-acc.aspx

* As Kyle mentioned this feature is not yet in production, but will be soon. We wanted to get out the implementation details now so when we're ready to turn it on, you will be too.

Invoking requestShareApp

First let’s take a look at the signature:

opensocial.requestShareApp(recipients, reason, opt_callback);

· recipients: this is a person’s friend ID. We currently only support sending in one ID at a time

· reason: this is the message you want sent. I’ll go over the rules for this below

· opt_callback: a callback function

Reason

The reason is an opensocial.Message object that has the text you’d like to have displayed in the invite set as the opensocial.Message.Field.BODY (which you can also pass into the constructor).

There are a few rules for the text:

· The text is limited to 150 characters – the character count does not include your application name or the sender and/or recipient display name. More on this below

· You can not include any HTML markup. Adding your links to your application, recipient and sender will be done by us.

· We have supplied three place holders you can use to add your application name, sender name and recipient name within links:

o [sender] – this will be transformed to a hyperlink with the senders display name as the text. The link will go to their profile.

o [app] – this will be transformed to a hyperlink with your application name as the text. The link will go to the applications profile.

o [recipient] – this will be transformed to a hyperlink with the recipients display name as the text. The link will go to their profile.

· You do not have to use all the placeholders. Example below.

Example Code

The code is pretty simple.

message = opensocial.newMessage("[sender] would like you to intall this really super application [app].");

opensocial.requestShareApp(recipientUserId, message, function(){
    alert('sent application invite');
    }
   );

recipientUserId to be the userId of the recipent.

The stubs for requestShareApp are already in production so you can wire up your applications now. Since the call will fail you’ll want to hide the functionality until we turn things on.

There are two ways to check if SHARE_APP is enabled. One is to make the call to requestShareApp() and if it’s not enabled you’ll get an unsupported back. The second is to use getSupportedPostToTargets() to get a list of supported PostTo targets – this is not part of the OS spec, but because requestShareApp currently uses PostTo it’ll work.

quick update on ACC

Kyle — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:59:00 GMT

I mentioned in a previous post that we're working on a new App Communications Channel ("ACC"). As you probably guessed, we're not quite going to get it out in June as we were shooting for, but the good news is that we're very close, so I want to give you guys a quick preview.

A lot of your apps are already making good use of the communications tools we've made available so far: our "Post To" functionality enabling apps to initiate user messages, comments, bulletins and blog posts. The goal for ACC is to provide new types of messages that are unique to applications and that have app-specific functionality. The first of these new message types are App Invites. Here's how this new invite will look to a recipient:

Quite a few things to point out here. First, App Invites will appear in a new Mail Center folder called "Notifications". This new folder will also contain other important messages including Comment requests, and there will be specific indicators for all these messages in the Updates box on Users' Home Pages. Second, the App Invite will include your app picture and allows you to specify the custom text that recipients will see. We think this leads to a much clearer presentation than invites contained in standard messages. Finally, these new invites allow recipients to add your apps right from the invite itself rather than having to go to the app profile or canvas. Here's what recipients will see when they click "Add..."

This dialogue will appear as a "lightbox" overlay right from the Notifcations inbox, so we hope it makes adding your apps much easier for MySpace users.

So how will these new Invites get generated? As with Post To messages, your apps can initiate App Invites from the Canvas page, but using the OpenSocial requestShareApp method. We'll provide more details in next few days on the exact syntax to use so you can start preparing your code. Here's a view of what the sending user will see after initiating an invitation:

I want to emphasize that the same guidelines we've put in place for existing messages apply just as strongly to App Invites: no incentivizing invitations, no tricking users, no auto inviting, etc. The goal for App Invites and ACC generally is to make app communications clearer and easier for end-users. If that goal is achieved, your apps will spread naturally and effectively. On the other, if users perceive these new messages as "spam" we all lose. To prevent that, we are also limiting App Invites to one recipient at a time initially. Utlimately, though, it's really up to you guys to show that we can utilize these tools responsibly and in ways that bolster the ecosystem.

Finally, now that I've whetted your appetites, I'm sure you're wondering when this cool new stuff will be ready. Be assured your trusty MDP Team is working long hours to get this out, and we expect to have it live in the next couple of weeks. Also, as mentioned above, we'll be providing more implementation details and info in advance.

/Kyle