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

“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.