Implementing an OpenSocial Container
Lou Moore, hi5.com
hi5
The Truly Global Social Network
hi5 — International Leader
#1 social network in 26 countries:
Latin America & Caribbean
Africa
Europe
Mexico
Peru
Cote d'Ivoire
Portugal
Venezuela
Nicaragua
Ghana
Romania
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Tunisia
Greece
Honduras
Cuba
Ecuador
El Salvador
Cyprus
Asia
Jamaica
Barbados
Malta
Thailand
Albania
Mongolia
Macedonia
Guatemala
80M+ registered members
40M WW monthly uniques
Luxembourg
hi5 — Truly Global Social Network
hi5 Traffic Across the Globe
25%
15%
20%
10%
30%
Offered in 23 Language Options
한국어
English
Español
(3 dialects: Español, España & Argentina)
Português
(2 dialects: Portugal & Brasil)
中文
(traditional & simplified scripts)
Italiano
Nederlands
日本語
Русский
Türkçe
Deutsch
Polski
Română
Magyar
Česky
Français
ภาษาไทย
Ελληνικά
YkpaÏHCbKa
Coming soon:
hi5 tool to translate your application!
hi5 User Demographics
Opportunity to Reach New Users
~40M WW hi5
unique users
~20% users
overlap
~20% users
overlap
~30% users
overlap
Motivation
Why Platform? Why OpenSocial?
Why Platform?
 Tap talent and creativity of the developer community
 Provide engaging experience for our users
 Obtain locally relevant content, provide a locally relevant experience
Why OpenSocial?
 Standards-based platform for deep integration within hi5
– Decreases our time to market
– Leverages open standards
– Strong opensource community
 Draw for developers because OpenSocial apps are easily portable
Defining Your Platform
How will applications integrate with your social
website?
Views - Profile
 User profiles are the center for self-expression on hi5 and are a
common feature of social sites
 A profile page may have many applications
Views - Profile
Views – Profile
 Considerations
– Performance: Many applications with dynamic content will impact page load
times.
– Styling: hi5 Profiles can be heavily styled so application profile views need to be
able to seamlessly blend.
– Customization: Allow users to control their profile pages via features like module
re-ordering.
– Common Actions: Provide links to View, Share, and Remove applications.
– What apps can’t do on hi5 Profiles
• Use viral channels
• Advertise or cross-promote
Views - Canvas
 Dedicated page for applications
 Monetization opportunity – advertisements allowed
Views - Canvas
Views - Canvas
 Considerations
–
–
–
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Vanity URLs for application canvas pages
Canvas page should detect if user has installed the application
Provide links for users to manage application settings
Provide method for users to give feedback to developers
Views - Preview
 Non-standard view
 Way for users to interact with an application without installing it
 Option for installing application
– Privacy settings to be applied
 Displays information about the application
–
–
–
–
Metadata such as summary and description
Friends with the application
Other apps by the developer
Rankings & ratings
Views - Preview
Views - Preview
 Considerations
– Non-standard view, another size for developers to conform to
– Permissions model is complex if viral channels allowed, but allows for a richer
pre-install experience (beware the blinking red arrow)
Views – Anywhere you choose!
 Homepage? Photos? Albums? Define your own views in the context
of your social site.
Permissions
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Access profile data
Add profile module
Allow friend updates (activity)
Allow notifications
Allow email
Viral Channels - Activity
 hi5 Friend Updates are displayed on the user’s profile and their
friends’ homepages
Viral Channels - Notifications
 Lightweight message sent to a user notifying them of some event.
 No action required, expire after 2 weeks, and limited to 5 per
app/user/day
Viral Channels - Email
 Limited to 1 per user/app/day
Viral Channels - Invites
 Invites are requests sent from a user to a friend inviting them to
install an application. Requests do require action on the part of the
recipient.
Directory
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Applications must be approved to be added to the hi5 directory.
Randomized at launch to maintain a level playing field.
Engagement-based metrics will be introduced to rank applications.
Sorting by most recent applications and applications that are locally
relevant or support the user’s language will also be introduced.
Directory
Applications Homepage
Implementing a REST API
Creating the web services necessary to support
OpenSocial
Publishing the hi5 Web Service
 Enunciate
–
–
–
–
Opensource java web service framework
Publishes endpoints in REST, JSON, and SOAP formats
Auto-documenting, annotation-based
http://enunciate.codehaus.org
 Authentication
– auth tokens generated based on valid API Key and hi5 user/password
combination
– Auth token may be obtained via REST call, but is always made available within
OpenSocial applications
hi5 REST APIs
REST API
 OpenSocial core APIs
– People
– Activity
– Persistence
 hi5 REST endpoints
– profile/foaf
– feed/activity
– profile/appdata
 Example call
– http://api.hi5.com/rest/profile/foaf/23777773
REST API
 OpenSocial request* APIs
– requestSendMessage
– requestCreateActivity
 hi5 REST endpoints
– notifications/send
– message/sendEmails
– friendUpdates/friendUpdate
 Example call
– http://api.hi5.com/rest/notifications/send?toIds=23777773&body=Hey&Hi5AuthTo
ken=xxxxx
OpenSocial REST API
 Currently no standard REST API across containers
 OpenSocial REST API spec in progress
 hi5 will migrate to support this in future
Implementing the OpenSocial API
Tying it back to your social data
Shindig
 Opensource Apache project – implementation of OpenSocial and
Gadgets specifications.
– Gadget Container JavaScript -- core JavaScript foundation for general gadget
functionality.
– Gadget Server – renders the gadget XML into JavaScript and HTML
– OpenSocial Container JavaScript -- OpenSocial specific functionality (profiles,
friends, activities, datastore)
Shindig Structure
Shindig - Features
Shindig – opensocial-reference
Shindig – opensocial-0.7
Shindig – feature.xml
Data Requests
 opensocial.newDataRequest
–
–
–
–
–
newFetchPersonRequest
newFetchPeopleRequest
newFetchActivitiesRequest
newFetchPersonAppDataRequest
newUpdatePersonAppDataRequest
 Map to hi5 REST endpoints and convert results to OpenSocial
objects
– opensocial.Person
– opensocial.Activity
– Persistence returns Map<PersonId, Map<String, String>>
jsoncontainer.js – Fetch People
jsoncontainer.js and the SocialData Servlet
 Request Batching
– Java servlet handles batched requests and returns one large JSON response
 All data fetches routed to SocialData servlet via jsoncontainer.js
Viral Requests (request*)
 opensocial.requestCreateActivity
– supported fields include TITLE, BODY, MEDIA_ITEMS, URL
– a and br tags allowed in TITLE and BODY
 opensocial.requestSendMessage
– NOTIFICATION and EMAIL implemented
– PRIVATE_MESSAGE and PUBLIC_MESSAGE return NOT_IMPLEMENTED
response
 opensocial.requestShareApp
– implemented as rpc call to navigate to invite page
 Map requests to hi5 REST api, return opensocial.ResponseItem
hi5container.js – Create Activity
hi5container.js – Share App
Gadgets – Core
 Prefs
– user data including country and language injected into applications
 io
– gadgets.io.makeRequest for remote fetching
– signed requests using OAuth
Gadgets – Other Features
 Views
– gadgets.views.requestNavigateTo
• rpc call to navigate to a desired View
– gadgets.views.getCurrentView
– gadgets.views.getParams
– view-params
• params in json format to be passed into applications
 Skins
– gadgets.skins.getProperty
hi5 Feature – Extending OpenSocial
 hi5.newFetchAlbumsRequest
 hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK
 hi5.PersonField.PRESENCE
 Capabilities discovery
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–
–
–
gadgets.util.hasFeature
gadgets.views.getSupportedViews
opensocial.getEnvironment().supportsField
Container declares supported features, views, and fields
hi5.js
Running a Shindig Server
OpenSocial in a high-volume production environment
Working with Shindig
 Deployment model
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–
–
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Own shindig svn repository
Build gadgets.jar
Build api war including gadgets.jar (shindig) and friend.jar (hi5) using enunciate
Deploy resulting war as web service on tomcat 6
hi5 Platform Architecture
Production Shindig Stats
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Currently 30 API/Shindig servers
6.4 billion requests since launch
Servers processing on average 200 req/s, 4-500 possible
Overall Traffic peak > 7000 req/s
 Significant efforts invested in making shindig work well with caching
in the browser and on Akamai.
 Learnings contributed back to OpenSocial
Building a Thriving Developer
Community
Communication, Communication, Communication
Tools
 Built-in app editor
 Language preview
 Activity preview to come
Communication
 Wiki, Bug Tracker, Forums
 IRC!!
 Blog Posts
– Clear explanations of viral channels, ranking systems, guidelines
– Post often
Incentives
 Free translations
 Hosting through Joyent
Maintaining a Great User Experience
It’s still all about the users
Privacy Controls
 My Apps page with controls for each installed app
 Ability to select privacy settings on preview/install page
 Choice to uninstall or remove from profile on Remove link on profile
Mitigating Spamminess
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Blocking an app
Reporting spam on all viral channels
Collecting feedback
Smart limits on viral channels, ability to monitor and control
 It’s a delicate balance between developer freedom and user
experience
Internationalization & Localization
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Basic support available today
Activity and Message templates coming soon
Crowd-sourced translation services for applications coming soon
Developer outreach in global markets, leverage platform to provide a
locally relevant experience.
Results
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Production launch 3/31, full launch to 100% of users 4/4
65 applications at launch, 328 today in 21 categories
Averaging > 1 million new installs each day
5 apps with > 1 million installs, 11 more with > 500k installs
Top apps getting > 1 million daily canvas views
 ~50% of active users have at least one application installed
 Active users average ~3 apps on every profile, with as many as 16
Demo
Walkthrough of an OpenSocial application on the hi5
platform: PixWall by PixVerse
Questions?