Social Perl: Basics of the Social App Platforms

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Social PerlOverview of Social Network Apps and APIs

1Friday, June 20, 2008

Copyright © 1997–2007 TravelPod.com, a proud founder of travel blogs on the web. All rights reserved.

Clayton Scott

Developer at TravelPod.com for 1 yearUsing Perl since about the same time as Perl 5

TravelPod.com?• The Web's Original Travel Blog - since 1997• Acquired by TripAdvisor/Expedia - December 2006• Blogging site for travelers and travel nuts• 2.8 M photos and videos• 108 K Blog entries and growing ... TravelPod Social Networking Cred• My Travel Blogs - 20K users on 5 Social Networks • Traveller IQ Challenge - 2M users on 6 Social Networks

- Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5



Social Networks?

- Websites designed to link you and people that have things in common with you + friends + business associates

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The most well known SNs

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Anatomy of a Social Network App

- User Profile Box- Canvas View- Viral Tools - News Items - Invitations - Application Gallery - Application Profile/page- Configuration

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User Profile Box

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Facebook Open Social- content set via the api and loaded from cache - content loaded from your server- you don’t know who viewer of profile is - you know the viewer- viewer data render locally via FBML - viewer data accessed by API- FBML markup embedded in your HTMLthat draws Facebook standard widgets or or draws data in a standard format



User Profile Box

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Canvas View

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Pretty much the same across all sites



Viral Tools

- This is the real reason you want to build a social network app- Rapid “Word of mouth” growth- Get lots of people to know your product- Expose your brand to thousands or millions

- Millions may not be possible on Facebook anymore- 10% of mail to Oxford University was from Facebook - Barbie (Identifying Malware Jun 16, 2008- this feature of Facebook is going away due to abuse

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Viral Tools - Newsfeed

- Broadcast messages to the friends of a user- Competition for a scarce resource + cap of total # of notification + cap on number sent to individuals + cap on total number the individual will see in one day + compete with other apps and site itself for news slots + fight user preferences too

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Facebook Open Social- not all the same but they all have one - not all containers implement anything like it yet- Facebook has tools and templates to help you combine multiple messages to one



Viral Tools - Invitations

- Most abused feature- MySpace and facebook cracking down on apps:

+ that use invites to give you points/currency in a game i.e. Zombies

+ force you to invite people to use the app

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Facebook Open Social- not all the same but they all provide a widget - not all containers implement anything like it yet



Viral Tools - The Rest

- Application Gallery + list of all of the applications available on the site + shows and icon and description of the app - Application Profile/page + A page you can customise to give user details about your app

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Facebook Open Social- large with many categories and stats - not all containers have opened

thebbeyondbeyondplement anything like it yet theirs beyond the first hundred apps



What Data is available

- It depends- on the social network- how the user has configured their privacy

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Information Available via APIs

- Websites designed to link you and people that have things in common with you + friends + business associates

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What Data is available

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Facebook Open Social- Event - Activity- Photos,Photo Uploads - MediaItem- Feeds, Notifications - Message- Networks - Organization- Extended Permission - Permission- Users, Friends - Person

- Phone



How to access the Data

Social site APIs split in two styles: - Facebook Followers - OpenSocial Clones

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Facebook Followers

- Facebook, Bebo, Friendster- Mostly just like any CGI application- The site proxies the request to your server- Injects data into the request (user info, app info, shared secret) - The site munges your output on the way back to the browser- Use from the CPAN + WWW::Facebook::API + WWW::Bebo::API

- See also + http://developer.facebook.com + http://developer.bebo.com + http://developer.friendster.com

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http://developer.facebook.com

http://developer.facebook.com

http://developer.bebo.com

http://developer.bebo.com

http://developer.friendster.com

http://developer.friendster.com


Facebook Followers

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Facebook Followers

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Facebook Followers

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Facebook Followers

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OpenSocial Clones

- MySpace,Orkut,Hi5,Ning,...- Full list at opensocial.org- Designed by Google be enable write once deploy any where - have a ways to go

- Each site has some minor variation from the other that can make life difficult

- API is browser based: javascript- REST style API coming

- Also + http://developer.myspace.com + http://developer.orkut.com

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http://developer.myspace.com

http://developer.myspace.com


OpenSocial Clones

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OpenSocial Clones

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OpenSocial Clones

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OpenSocial Clones

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OpenSocial Clones

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OpenSocial Clones

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Thank you

Questions?

Feel free to email me with questions:[email protected]

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Social Perl: Basics of the Social App Platforms

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