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Read it, comment, and share it with your friendsI just put an application on MySpace
… and I want to make it very clear that OpenSocial is TOTAL GARBAGE. There’s no comparison between OpenSocial and the deep integration platforms that Facebook and Bebo have. No comparison at all.
On Facebook, with the direct, server side connection that I have with Facebook’s API, I can get rich data about users and their friends, and tie that data in with my entire application, so that I can make virtual MMOs that are inherently social. I also have access to a ton of distribution channels within Facebook, and whatever I send to Facebook is automatically cached so that the cost for me is very low. MySpace has none of this. OpenSocial is just a half-baked way to get snippets of data about a user and their friends via Javascript, with no potential for doing anything useful with that data or for talking to server-side code that comprises a real application. The most you can make on MySpace is a Javascript-based app that lets you send things to friends. You can’t do social games. THERE’S JUST NO FUNCTIONALITY IN MYSPACE TO ENABLE THAT.
Why am I so intent on making this known to everyone, you ask? Because for the past 6 months, everyone has been talking about OpenSocial as if it’s a “forrealz” development platform and as if it can be compared even in the slightest to a mature platform like Facebook’s API. Hopefully tomorrow’s application directory launch on MySpace will be a reality check for all the press morons out there. Look at the pinnacle of what can be done on MySpace’s platform and you won’t see any complex MMOs like Warbook or any rich sub-communities like Fluff Friends or Human Pets. The most I’ve seen is a basic app that lets you put a Fortune Cookie on your profile and send it to your friends. On Facebook, we laugh at apps like that.
Anyway, I’ll post a link to my MySpace application later, but be warned, it’s something most readers of this blog have already soon, so I don’t think it will interest anyone. I just did it for the sake of doing it.
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5 Comments
Responses to my articleForgive my ignorance, I’m not into social networking and don’t have a facebook or myspace account. However, this made me raise an eyebrow:
Surely that means users have questionable privacy? Are you able to hook into their profile (or whatever, I don’t ‘do’ facebook lingo either) and get all of their info?
Jem: Yep, I can. But it’s not as bad as you might think; I can only grab as much information as a user has made available, and I can’t grab any contact info. The only sleazy stuff it’s useful for is ad targeting.
Oh, that makes more sense.
This is a bit sensational. I’ve developed a couple of (admittedly doomed) apps on FaceBook, and I have been developing in OpenSocial as well. Both have similar capabilities, and its not correct to say that you can’t develop social games. If you’re just dropping in an IFRAME to display some pre-fabbed website, then yeah, you’ll probably be disappointed at what you can do. But, if you write a rich client in javascript and use makeRequest to munge all that beautiful data together on a backend server, it can be quite compelling.
Barry: you have the available functionality to make a game, but the avenues of social distribution (what is called “deep integration”) are not yet available on MySpace. Therefore, you can’t make a social game. Not yet.
If all you have developed were doomed apps on Facebook, you probably didn’t take much advantage of those social avenues. That stuff is essential to making successful games on these networks, because it’s the social factor that attracts so many users.
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