Application Guidelines/Terms of Use Updated

StephanieBamBam — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:48:00 GMT

Heya all,

As you may (or may not) have noticed, we updated our Developer Terms of Use and Application Guidelines today. These guidelines are effective immediately for all new applications, and applications that are currently live on the platform have until Monday, August 25^th to comply.

Any application not complying with these new guidelines by 9am PST on Monday August 25^h may be suspended without warning.

These changes probably don’t affect all of you, but some apps will have to be updated to be in compliance. Some bullet points on the updates:

You may now use the following external Javascript libraries on all application surfaces:

Libraries hosted by MySpace
Google-hosted AJAX libraries
YUI Library Component Files

All developers must have a public MySpace profile open to communication. Meaning, the developer must allow messages from all users, and may not set messaging to friends-only. We do not want to see any more forum threads from members who can't contact developers.

Age restricted applications (e.g., dating applications are restricted to 18+ and alcohol applications are restricted to 21+) must set their age correctly using the appropriate controls within application setup. Developers no longer need to manually code in an age check.

Apps that collect payments must:

Have a clear and easily discoverable area for members to contact the developer with questions.
Respond to any member communication within a reasonable period of time
Provide a contact name, phone number, MySpace profile and email address to MySpace for any law enforcement reports or inquiries. The email address or profile may also be given to members who ask how to contact the developer.

Apps that contain games:

Games of chance may not award prizes, or give members the ability to cash out, return, or convert money into anything of value (e.g., gift certificates),
Games that charge a fee to play may not award prizes or give members the ability to cash out or return money. A friendly reminder on this one – you may not charge a fee for the application itself. The app’s core functionality must be accessible without payment.
Games must not mislead or confuse their users. Things like rules must be extremely clear.

I also want to re-emphasize some other guidelines that some folks seem to be confused about.

Applications may not ask a member to send any communication as the first action within the app, even if they are returning to the app for a second time. The first screen a member sees when entering the app may not be a prompt to send an invite, bulletin, message, or the like. Ever.
Applications must not force or mislead a user to send communication via confusing UI, small “skip” links, or repetitive attempts to encourage the same action.

Again, all live apps have until Monday, August 25^th to be compliant.

Any questions or comments, head on over to our Guidelines Forum.

- Stephanie

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Application Guidelines/Terms of Use Updated