Thread

quote]Google has everyone on board except those that count.

Hey Paul…It’s just been confirmed by TechCrunch that MySpace is onboard…do they count?
😊

Do you have a MySpace profile PXLated? Really?

Is having one a bad thing? :red:

I look at it as brand protection… 😊

Is having one a bad thing? :red:

I look at it as brand protection… 😊

[voice style=“darthVader”]Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!![/voice]

John’s Leftenant Zombie won 5 EE points by serving a bowl of pain to Derek’s Leftenant Zombie! The pain was brought. So was the funk.

See, who needs Facebook when we have our own Zombie app?  Are EE point redeemable for software?

Do you have a MySpace profile PXLated? Really?

Are we developing our sites for Power Users like PXLAted, or everyday people?

I have a 26 year old sister who has a professional job working for Quiksilver Sportswear. I remembered that she had a MySpace page in college and was curious if she still used the site. When I asked her, she said, yes. When I asked about her colleagues at work, she told me all of them are on MySpace.

I’m developing my community for everyday people, and like the idea of making my site open to social network standards.

Do you have a MySpace profile PXLated? Really?

Are we developing our sites for Power Users like PXLAted, or everyday people?

I have a 26 year old sister who has a professional job working for Quiksilver Sportswear. I remembered that she had a MySpace page in college and was curious if she still used the site. When I asked her, she said, yes. When I asked about her colleagues at work, she told me all of them are on MySpace.

I’m developing my community for everyday people, and like the idea of making my site open to social network standards.

Which is part of my point. One of EE’s development goals is to make as little assumptions as possible about what people want to do with EE. You want to use OpenSocial, someone else doesn’t. What if we had committed to Facebook’s platform when it was announced? Then we’d have to do OpenSocial for sure. And what about the 3-4 other proposed social solutions? Do we commit to those too? Which part of our audience to we decide against by making an assumption about preferred 3rd party solutions? More often than not we’ll decide to design EE so that the developer chooses the solution, not us.

I’m not saying we’ll never do it, I’m just saying we’re cautious folks and that even if OpenSocial was something the entire dev team was jumping up and down about, there is no way we integrate a 3rd party solution that is barely 48 hours old.

But, here is another opportunity for an EE developer to come in and offer a solution so that people who want to make use of it can.

Really, from what I can see of OpenSocial its some snazzy Javascript and if you’re comfortable with HTML, CSS, and Javascript you’ll be working with OpenSocial in no time anyway. You don’t need to be a seasoned php (or any other programming language) developer apparently.

I think Leslie is right, many of the links I was clicking on pointed to docs for Google Gadgets which I believe have already been around for a while. 

From here

Google Gadgets are simple HTML and JavaScript mini-applications served in iFrames that can be embedded in webpages and other apps.

If the OpenSocial gives me an API that I could use to build a missile to nuke Techcrunch and Techmeme with then it could be huge!  It would definitely live up to the hype.

I don’t see what is so great about the Facebook “platform” anyways.  I have like ten invites to stupid spammy applications that I will never open.  It is really annoying, every time a new friend signs up for Facebook for the first time I get a new round of silly invites.

I agree with you Les, one doesn’t want to just rush in…even though joining in could generate some PR (cough, 6-something, cough) even if you don’t end up doing anything with it. 😉

APIs need to get established and settled in (Amazon, Google Maps, etc) before it’s worth the effort. Once well known and established though, I think you guys should offer EE native/supported plugins, modules, or extensions rather than relying on third parties.

...I’d think that you’d be proud of us for having a company culture that does not bend like a reed to the trend winds, and that we value our standards higher than a quick buck.

Indeed, and I’m always glad to see a company wait and produce a measured response, rather than react to a situation.  Now, Google OpenSocial, and the Social Web for that matter, will definitely be something that warrants a response from EE.

Personally, I’d like to reap the benefits of opening my site to the OpenSocial community, and it would be great if EE provided an opportunity for me to do so.

I’m looking forward to seeing how EE responds to this emerging trend on the web.

At this point, it sounds more like OpenWidgets than OpenSocial…at least from my reading so far today.
Of course my take could be off:-)

I think that’s essentially correct, although I see Google building more into this in the near future.

What is the basic architecture of a social application that uses the OpenSocial API?

OpenSocial applications use Google’s gadget architecture but with extensions that provide programmatic access to social data within its container environment. Similar to Google Gadgets, OpenSocial apps are hosted XML documents with HTML/JavaScript within their bodies. Social apps have most of the infrastructure of Google Gadgets available to them but with a few minor exceptions.

This especially caught my eye…

Will you be open sourcing OpenSocial? Under what license?

Currently, the sample code is released under the Apache 2.0 license. Additionally, we have Creative Commons licensed all of the OpenSocial documentation, so you are welcome to reuse and remix as appropriate. In the future, we are planning to open-source the components that are required to run OpenSocial on your own website.

If OpenSocial really takes off, then things could get interesting.  😊

😊  The near-term application of this technology, as I see it, is that if someone were to create an ad-supported widget, they could really drive some highly-targeted marketing to different customer bases depending on the site in question (MySpace, etc.) 

But the far term applications are what interests me…

Let’s say that Google wins the 700mhz battle, and they release the GPhone next year.  You know that Google would open it up for 3rd-party developers.  And when you combine those opportunities, with the rise of the OpenSocial web, then I’d expect to see some very rapid changes.

No, I avoid the social apps, but that’s totally beside the point.
You have to admit, adding MySpace puts the whole thing into a different light, MySpace counts to a lot of people. Every band I know has a space. 😊

And bands are going to use APIs?

Mine would . . . . 😉

APIs need to get established and settled in (Amazon, Google Maps, etc) before it’s worth the effort. Once well known and established though, I think you guys should offer EE native/supported plugins, modules, or extensions rather than relying on third parties.

. . . and would it be unfair for me to say that 3rd party development of templates, plugins, modules, and extensions for EE is a bit thin on the ground?  While the EE labs certainly shouldn’t be reeds bending in the fickle winds of fashion, having a CMS “platform” with reedlike 3rd party offerings is not desirable either.

Don’t get me wrong, outside the “church” I’m an EE fanatic, evangalist even.  I consider EE an “elite level” product and the EE labs an “elite team”.  That doesn’t mean anyone can afford to be “elitist”.

I use Facebook - why? - because almost everybody I know does as well.  I chose not to use MySpace because I personally think it sucks - but guess what, alot of people do use it.  Alot of my potential clients, customers, and audience uses MySpace.  MySpace now pervades society at a rather deep level - even here on the shores of the Southern Ocean.  Politicians in our State Parliament now quote content from MySpace in hansard!

Looking forward to EE 2.0, looking forward to more great stuff from the EE team, and in the absence of robust and complete 3rd party offerings, I look forward to more native/supported modules, plugins, extensions, and templates.

Keep up the good work.  😊