MySpace has had a history of a strong ecosystem

• Youtube , Photobucket, Slide, RockYou are all examples

MySpace values are driving there developer platform.

• Minimal creative restrictions
• Encouraging self expression
• High level of customizability
• Beneficial to user, developers

MySpace API overview

OpenSocial APIs

• javascript/html for embedded apps
• with myspace extensions

REST APIs

• server to server comm
• Oath authentication

Actionscript APIs

• flash support

Why OpenSocial?

Openness

• openness key to Myspace success
• openess helps everyone

Portability

• developers can spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding for every social network

Leveraged existing technologies

• no need to lerrn proprietary development languages

OpenSocial Support

• full support of public spec
• currently support V0.6 with support for V0.7 soon
• MySpace specific extensions for MySpace specific features
  • bulletins
  • additional attributes for bands

Platform surface

• Profile surface
• Canvas surface
• User homepage surface (private space)
  • User specific surface
  • Enables the application to show specific data to a user
  • eg ebay bids, tweets from friends
• Application Gallery
• Application Profile

Security, Privacy and Safety
Applications will go through safety review process makes sure it doen’t spread bad or rogue code or viruses, keeps data secure and protects against rogue actions from other users

Apps will be governed by same privacy controls that are in place for members
will be using new technology to ensure that applications are safe for end ocnsumers

• Caja – MySpace and Google Joint Javascript Sanitizer
• Proprietary MySpace Technology

Balancing Virality and user Experience

Virality vs User Experience

• take long term approach to growth and distribution
• ensure clean applicaiton experience

Spam based growth is not needed for good applications

Measured approach to application growth

• Workflow limited to sending message 1 to 1

Restrictive early on, slowly increase communications channel

[tags]gspwest08, graphing social, MySpace[/tags]

Starts by focusing on how they think about the internet. Internet becoming more personal, more portable, and more collaborative.

Myspace core business is driven by two key engines and enablement platform( tools to create your own experience as a user and developer tools) and a connectivity platform (the MySpace social graph). MySpace wants to use these core engines to drive change in the internet.

Launched a developer platform on February 5. Phase 1 is developer only (30 day head start). Phase 2 will go live to users and launch an application directory. Phase 3 layer in an additional services for developers.

What it to be a democratic process to give developers a voice and level playing field.

The platform will be based on open standards, eg, Open Social.

Amit states that there is a commitment to keeping MySpace safe and a commitment to monetization.

Five surfaces for an application

• directory listing
• profile
• canvas pages
• embeds on profiles
• embeds on home pages

API to public profile data
authenticate user
access friends list
public information
photos
videos
status mood

Amit focuses on the business of social platforms
Its been hard to monetize because traditional approaches don’t work. He says they are “laser focused” on solving this problem.

• 300 people in sales class 1 branded sales, class 2 perfromance sales, class 3 network ads
• 150 engineers and product managers focused on monetization technology
• all inventory runs off of one ad server and we can yield optimize every single impression

The philosophy – sell people not pages. Need to go beyond keywords to learn about what images, blog posts and unstructured data to create hyper targeted interest groups.

He shows an example of Brad – the sports and music fan. He then goes on to do a comparison of hypertargeting vs traditional web proxies. He shows the range of data that MySpace knows about it’s users and examples of how detailed they can get with people’s interest data. Southern Girl example is a marathon runner with a count down to the next marathon – imagine what you can do with that information.

He says they are seeing 300% improvement in click through for 150 initial advertisers using hyper-targeting.

He says they have developed a self-serve advertising system for MySpace that will open up the advertising possibilities for small business marketers.

He sees this as just the beginning of scratching the surface. They will continue to focus on smart monetization technology to unlock value in social media.

Questions

How much does hyper-targeting pull in? – Pulls in a lot of un-structured data. Uses smart machine learning technology – points to 300% improvement as evidence.

How will developers make money? Help facilitate with marketing. They will be developing their own ad network to help monetize this.

Where do you see engagement going? A few things that are important to consider, what are the metrics of a advertising system, what works at scale for advertisers, tie ins to new applications people are developing. Things will become more customized in terms of user/advertiser engagement

When will third party apps go live? Very soon, over the next few weeks.

[tags]gspwest08, graphing social, Graphing Social Patterns, Amit Kapur, MySpace[/tags]

Jason’s discussion of his experience at MySpace illustrates the importance of operational optimization to drive monetization of super fans. In his new company, Jason is putting a lot of what he’s learned to use in creating a new and fun social site. SodaHead has mastered the art of lowering the difficulty and barriers to user generated content. It leads to an experience where its much easier to join in the social mix in a more meaningful way than just asking someone to be your friend. SodaHead is definitely an experience everyone should try.

Jason Feffer has an exciting eight-year history of Internet startup experience leading up to his most recent startup, SodaHead.com. Mr. Feffer helped start MySpace in 2003, which sold to News Corp for $580M. During his three years at MySpace, Jason served on the executive committee and as Vice President of Operations as the membership grew to 100 million. Mr. Feffer oversaw advertising operations, revenue reporting, policy enforcement, government relations and several other departments at MySpace.

[tags]Jason Feffer, MySpace, SodaHead, social media, social networking, social media optimization, super fans[/tags]

Kina is trying to win a contest and NEEDS YOUR VOTE. The contest is called Crash the Superbowl and the winner gets a recording contract and their video played on the Super Bowl broadcast. Kina was kind enough to spend some time with me on the phone discussing her career, the contest and the impact of her most recent experience with social media.

If you want to hear more of Kina’s music you can visit her YouTube page, KinaGrannis.com or sign up for voting reminders at a site she set up for video blogging about the contest called Two Weeks for Kina.

Kina also has some CDs for sale on iTunes including One More in the Attic, sincerely, me and In Memory of the Singing Bridge

Gotta Digg Video

The Myspace Video

So GO VOTE FOR KINA.

[tags]Crash the Super Bowl, Kina Grannis, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, social media, social media marketing[/tags]