Cyworld plans to adopt OpenSocial

Annyonghaseyo!

My name is Kyle Kim and I work on the Open Cyworld project at SK Communications in Korea. We are very excited to announce that we plan to adopt OpenSocial for Cyworld, which is the biggest social networking service in Korea with more than 23 million members registered under their real names!

Also known as the first ever SNS with an established business model of selling virtual items with own virtual currency, Dotori (acorns), we are looking for quality applications that will enhance our users’ experience on Cyworld.

We plan to launch a closed beta developer sandbox in July and an open beta service by the end of September (Dotori payment API will be launched later this year). There will also be a conference in July, introducing Open Cyworld project to media, industry as well as developers.

We believe there will be plenty of opportunities for you as a developer:

• The biggest real-name based network in the world
• Payment API with proven virtual currency, Dotori
• Viral distribution system integrated with NateOn, the leading instant messenger in Korea with 27 million registered members

We are at Google I/O this week, and would be happy to meet developers interested in Cyworld!

About SK Communications

SK Communications is an affiliate of SK Group, the 3rd largest corporation in Korea, and a direct subsidiary of SK Telecom, the dominant telecommunications provider in Korea with over 50% of market share.

A leading online service provider, SK Communications offers wide range of services including Cyworld (SNS), NateOn (IM), Nate (Portal), etc.

About Cyworld

Cyworld is the biggest real-name based social networking service in the world. With more than 23 million registered members, Cyworld users consist of 48% of total Korean population and 66% of all internet users in Korea. Main business model is digital item sales, which includes decorations for “Minihompies” and music.

Cyworld earns more than 7 billion KRW per month in revenue from digital item sales; Average revenue per user is about 2,700 KRW per month.

Cyworld Fact Sheet (as of December 2008)

• 23 million registered members
• Among them, 13.6 million members log in on the site more than once per month
• Average number of 1-chon (friends) per member, 47.8
• All Cyworld members are connected to each other by 4.5 degrees of separation
• 6.6 billion photographs uploaded
• 19.6 billion postings
• 12 million postings posted everyday
• 8 million replies posted everyday
• 2,320 stars with Cyworld Minihompies
• 1.7 million members visiting their Minihompies everyday

If you’re interested in writing apps for Cyworld, please contact Dyne, who works for Corporate Development Team (dynelee@skcomms.co.kr)

[Update: Changed link to point to Cyworld Korea, since that's where OpenSocial will be launched.]

Posted by Kyle Kim, Cyworld Team

The OpenSocial App Directory: All our apps in one place

Today, social app developers must submit their applications on each of the dozens of OpenSocial containers in order to leverage the full potential of OpenSocial's wide distribution. Likewise, it's difficult for new containers to tap into OpenSocial's large developer base and find great apps for their sites. As a result, it's hard to tell just how many apps are out there and who's using them.

The OpenSocial App Directory is a community-wide effort to create a centralized location for developers and containers to submit, review, and share OpenSocial applications. In the initial release, we've included applications that are live on several popular sites that support OpenSocial, like MySpace, orkut, and hi5. Going forward, we plan to include approved apps from more containers, as well as allow developers to submit their own apps.

Please visit the Directory Info page to learn more about how to be included in the directory.

Posted by Lane LiaBraaten, OpenSocial Team

What's on your mind? Ask the experts at Google I/O

There will be a number of sessions on OpenSocial at Google I/O this week and we've assembled several panels of industry leaders, from top app developers to the biggest containers, and even some folks from the enterprise world. It will be a great chance to learn from people that have lots of experience with OpenSocial -- even if you can't make it to the event yourself.

Using Google Moderator, you can post your own question or vote on other questions that you'd like to hear answered. We'll address the top questions at Google I/O and post videos of the sessions online so everyone can benefit from the answers.

• Wonder how Playfish, RockYou!, Zynga and others have attracted millions of users to their apps? Ask questions for the Fireside Chat with App Developers here!
• Thinking of starting your own OpenSocial container, but not sure where to start? Ask questions for the Fireside Chat with Containers here!
• Wondering how you can take this technology into the enterpise? Ask questions for the "OpenSocial in the Enterprise" session here!
  

You can find Q&A pages for all the sessions at I/O, so let us know what's on your mind and we'll address your questions at the event.

Posted by Lane LiaBraaten, OpenSocial Team

OpenSocial from an Enterprise perspective

This post is part of the Who's @ Google I/O, a series of blog posts that give a closer look at developers who'll be speaking or demoing at Google I/O.

As a Platform Evangelist at salesforce.com I have the enviable job of evaluating various technologies and how they relate to the Force.com platform. Part of my recent exploration has been around the possibility of leveraging social networking for the enterprise, which has led me to explore many social networking technologies, including OpenSocial.

Social and professional networking revolve around people. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is also all about people, but with a bit of formality around the relationships between the people. In my CRM system, I have friends and colleagues, but I also have relationships with customers and potential customers (contacts and leads in the CRM parlance) that may be friends, professional acquaintances, or complete strangers.

Now, understanding that I have these formal and informal relationships, how do I combine the two in a way that respects all the aspects or characteristics of these relationships? That's a big question.

The Force.com platform allows you to address this question by leveraging social networks at the business logic level. That means your integration with a social network is not limited to users viewing apps on a page. Using OpenSocial's REST APIs, you can create solutions that work their magic behind the scenes, allowing true innovation in developing enterprise applications that leverage social and professional networks.

Salesforce.com is one of several companies building technology to help bring social elements to the enterprise. Next week at Google I/O several of us will be participating in an OpenSocial in the Enterprise panel where we (and you!) can help move this field forward. Come challenge us with your own thought-provoking questions about mixing social and enterprise. You can even start posting your questions now on this Q&A page and we'll address them next week.

Posted by Dave Carroll, Platform Evangelist - Salesforce.com

How OpenSocial v0.9 streamlines your app

One of the major updates to OpenSocial in the latest version is a new programming model that allows you to send social data directly from the container to your application's server, where you can use the data to render any content you want to show the user. This model lets you use your existing presentation layer (faster coding!) and reduces the number of requests needed to pass social data between clients, containers, and your app server (faster apps!). Here's a closer look...

Many apps want to combine the social data from the container with the application data that lives on their server. In previous iterations of OpenSocial, many apps did something like the following:

1. Client requests profile and friend info from the container (via DataRequests)
   
2. Container responds with the social data
   
3. Client requests application data from a remote server (via makeRequest)
4. Container proxies request to remote server
   
5. Remote server responds to container with application data
   
6. Client combines the social and application data and presents it to the user (via JavaScript)

With v0.9's streamlined approach, the container can send social data to a remote server via "data pipelining" and you can combine that social data on your server, using your existing presentation layer, with a technique called "proxied content." The new flow looks like this:

1. Client requests an application view
2. The container sends social data to the remote server
3. The remote server combines social and application data, returning HTML and JavaScript
4. The container sends the content to the client

Much cleaner! These new features are already live on sandbox.orkut.com and will be coming soon to OpenSocial containers everywhere. To learn how to use data pipelining and proxied content in your OpenSocial app, check out this new tutorial.

Happy coding!

Posted by Lane LiaBraaten, OpenSocial Team

Register Now! San Francisco DevJam - Tuesday, May 26th

Greetings Developers!

The MySpace Open Platform would like to invite you to the MySpace San Francisco DevJam.

This DevJam covers everything you’ll need to know about how to build great apps using MySpace Open Platform. It will begin with the State of the Platform, and tell you all about what’s happening with the container and things to come. It’ll cover everything from porting apps to MySpace, leveraging messaging channels, OpenSocial 0.9, OSML, using OpenSocial outside the container, and everything in between. You won’t want to miss this DevJam event!

If you can’t attend in person, don’t worry! We plan to livestream the event, stay tuned on that front for more details…

Guest Speakers include:

• Jason Oberfest, General Manager of the MySpace Open Platform and SVP of Business Development
• Gerardo Capiel, VP of Product for the MySpace Open Platform
• Dan Yue, Co-Founder of Playdom
• Sebastien de Halleux, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Playfish
• Max Newbould, Product Lead for MySpace Open Platform’s OpenSocial container
• Max Engel, Product Lead for MySpaceID

And many more!

Space is limited, so click below to see the full agenda and to register now!

http://myspacesfdevjam.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!!

Posted by MySpace Open Platform Team

Sonico.com announces the launch of its OpenSocial Container

Hola! My name is Alvaro Teijeiro and I am Sonico’s development manager.

I’m happy to announce that Sonico has recently launched its OpenSocial developer sandbox! Sonico.com is one of the leading social networks in Latin America with more than 35 million registered users. Positioned as the second largest social network in Brazil, Sonico is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. We’re currently looking for select launch partners that can work with us to provide valuable engaging apps for our upcoming June production launch.

To request access to the developer sandbox, visit http://sandbox.sonico.com.

Background
Sonico is a social communication platform launched in July 2007 that merges social utility and entertainment to communicate and keep in touch with friends, family and co-workers. Sonico has been developed with a strong emphasis in user legitimacy, privacy and personalization, and is being widely adopted across Latin America.

In addition to popular features such as photo and video sharing, we’ve recently launched a virtual currency system that can be used to purchase a wide variety of goods and services, such as virtual gifts, greeting cards and profile skins. We’re very excited to allow app developers to tap into this new economy and will be working towards it during the next couple of months!

Detailed specs on Sonico’s features, growth and OpenSocial implementation can be found in the following presentation:

Sonico OpenSocial Launch

View more presentations from Sonico Presentations.

Implementation Overview: OpenSocial v0.8.1
Sonico's OpenSocial platform includes the following:

• Full support for the core Opensocial APIs:
• AppData
• People/Person
• Activities
• Gadget rendering of home, profile, preview and canvas views
• Dimensions for views are the same as used by Orkut
• Viral features:
• requestCreateActivity
• requestShareApp
• requestSendMessage
• RESTful APIs
• RESTful and RPC protocols

Upcoming Supported Features

• Access to PhotoAlbum API by July
• Access to Virtual Currency API by August
  

For further implementation details and future updates, please see: http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=Sonico

Timeline
Developer Sandbox – Available now! (since April)
Consumer Launch - June 2009

We’re really excited to work with app developers to deliver engaging, value added applications to millions of users!

For more information regarding Sonico.com OpenSocial platform, please visit and/or contact us at http://sandbox.sonico.com.

Posted by Alvaro Teijeiro, CIO, Sonico