Building OpenSocial Apps: A Field Guide to Working with the MySpace Platform [Paperback]

“The authors did a great job covering the various ins and outs of OpenSocial, and especially the specific MySpace quirks. If you are a new social networking application developer or even someone who just wants to write better OpenSocial Apps, then this book has what you are looking for.”

–Cassandra Doll, Software Engineer, Google

When you write OpenSocial applications for MySpace, you can reach millions of users overnight. Building OpenSocial Apps shows you how, one step at a time. Whether you’re building casual widgets or feature-rich, professional applications, this book will teach you everything you need to know.

The authors are the leading experts on OpenSocial and MySpace and have personally helped construct the MySpace platform and OpenSocial standards. In this indispensable book, they walk you through the entire process of building apps, from signing up through building complex apps that can scale to thousands of users and interoperate on more than fifty social networks, such as Hi5, Orkut, and LinkedIn. They demonstrate today’s best practices for building OpenSocial applications and present dozens of tips for leveraging both MySpace and OpenSocial to their fullest. Coverage includes

• Installing and working with the MySpace Developer Platform
• Retrieving, parsing, and displaying user data, friend lists, and photos
• Sending App invitations and notifications
• Building mashups that communicate with third-party web services
• Marketing your App and building your user base
• Designing for performance, scalability, and fault tolerance
• Securing MySpace and OpenSocial apps, and protecting users’ privacy
• Building apps that display ads and accept micropayments

A companion web site (opensocialtictactoe.googlecode.com) includes an extensive library of downloadable source code and other support materials.

Chris Cole is a software architect at MySpace and is a major contributor to building the MySpace Open Platform and keeping it committed to OpenSocial. He’s been a core contributor to the OpenSocial 0.9 specification and is the primary architect and implementer of OSML (OpenSocial Markup Language) on the MySpace platform. Chris has been in software for fifteen years and has spent much of that time riding the various waves of the Internet and pushing the boundaries of the Web.

Chad Russell is the lead developer on the MySpace OpenSocial team. He knows the OpenSocial spec front to back, in addition to every tip, trick, and nuance of the MySpace platform itself. Chad holds an engineering degree from the University of Toronto and currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Jessica Whyte has worked for several years as a journalist, most recently with Journalists for Human Rights, and is currently a graduate student at the University of Washington, studying Human-Centered Design and Engineering. She lives in Seattle with her husband and coauthor, Chad Russell.