Inside Facebook

It’s been many weeks in the making, but we at Inside Facebook have some exciting news to share today - we are launching a new, experimental second blog called Inside Social Games! Inside Social Games is going to be entirely devoted to tracking the convergence of games and social network platforms.

So what are social games anyway - and why Inside Social Games now? Just as I was surprised two years ago by the way my “non-geeky” friends were using Facebook, I’m finding myself repeatedly being surprised by the way those same people are playing new kinds of “social games” inside Facebook (and MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, and Orkut) now. Games that, despite their apparent simplicity or complexity, are being adopted in large numbers by people outside traditional console, PC, and online gaming demographics. Games on social networks are bringing together family and friends like games never before have - and we think that’s pretty darn cool.

Like Inside Facebook two years ago, I’m starting Inside Social Games as an experiment. An experiment into what “social gaming” really means and how social games may or may not be changing the way large numbers of people play and communicate. What the results will be, I’m not yet sure, but I’m excited to see what conversations emerge over the coming weeks and months, especially between the game design and SNAP communities.

I’m proud to announce that I’ve been able to land Chris Holt (also of PC Gamer) to review current and new releases. Chris would love to receive tips on new games, so feel free to contact him at submit AT insidesocialgames DOT com to let him know what you’re up to.

We’re looking forward to tracking not only the games but also the people and companies behind them that are leading the charge into this new and exciting space. We believe some interesting new companies will be created as the worlds of gaming and social networks collide. It should be a fun ride. Please drop us a line any time!

This morning at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco I moderated the Comparing Social Platforms panel, which was comprised of awesome folks speaking on behalf of the top social platforms on the web today:

• Allen Hurff, SVP of Engineering at MySpace
• Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook
• Jessica Alter, Director of Platform and Business Development at Bebo
• Patrick Chanezon, OpenSocial Evangelist at Google
• David Recordon, Open Platform Lead at Six Apart

While the panel covered a variety topics that each merit more discussion (there are entire conferences devoted to doing just that), this morning the panel discussed key issues for the social platform economy - such as each platform’s philosophy on key product integration points (profile, feeds, viral channels), aligning user and developer interests (engagement, marketing channels), monetization roadmap (ad networks, commerce), data portability, and potential business conflicts (in verticals like photos and music).

Since I was moderating the panel, I didn’t have time to take notes, but here are some paraphrases of some noteworthy panelist comments:

• Jessica Alter: We’re going to be driving developers to focus more and more on engagement. While I don’t have any specific announcements today, things like time spent and page views are going to become more important on the platform.
• Allen Hurff: On the question of verticals like music, of course MySpace is going to continue to work with major music distribution partners around the world. But we really want to remain as agnostic as possible. In fact, I expect there to be many more app feed items than MySpace system feed items.
• Dave Morin: We’re spending a lot of our time right now thinking about data portability, or perhaps it would better be called “privacy portability.” You should have the option to have your privacy settings follow you around the web.
• David Recordon: The term “data portability” almost can’t be used in that way any more, since the branding of the term now means something else.
• Patrick Chanezon: Unlike most of these social platforms, iGoogle is much more of a social content discovery service than social network. It’s a pretty different type of service that’s built on OpenSocial that we think is really interesting.
• Allen Hurff: The MySpace Platform actually represents a pretty big shift just in the last year from the way MySpace has traditionally viewed opening up its data. We’re going to push this even further in 2008.
• Dave Morin: Creating a platform is like creating a marketplace. You have your arbitrageurs, and we have those, you have your hedge funds, they’re like the guys staying up all night finding ways to tweak their way into the viral channels more.
• Patrick Chanezon: OpenSocial is really just an overlap of the most common set of services needed to run social applications. We may begin to see platforms on top of platforms in the coming year.

Despite the early start time (8:30!), by midway through the panel there were folks crowding in the back of the room. We only had time for a couple audience questions before we had to make room for the next panel. Thanks to everyone for a great discussion! For more, check out GSP East.

Update: Here’s a video of the panel, thanks to Simon Chen:

Web 2.0 Expo SF is happening this week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center - hard to believe it’s already here! This year, there are several excellent focus tracks on different days of the week, including Social Platforms, Marketing & Community, and the Mobile Web.

I’ll be moderating Wednesday’s session on Comparing Social Platforms, which kicks off the day’s Focus on Social Platforms track. I am honored to be joined by a terrific panel:

• Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook
• Allen Hurff, SVP of Engineering at MySpace
• Jessica Alter, Director of Platform and Business Development at Bebo
• David Recordon, Open Platform Lead at Six Apart

Look forward to seeing you there!

Intridea, a development shop with offices in DC and Berkeley, has released a client that provides a Ruby on Rails interface for the Bebo Platform called Beboist.

The plugin was designed from the ground-up to be flexible enough to accommodate any changes to the API, while at the same time providing a clean interface that will be familiar to most Rails developers.

This is the first Rails binding for Bebo that I’ve seen. (rfacebook is a popular Ruby interface to the Facebook Platform APIs - thanks Tom). Nice job, Intridea!

On the same day that Bebo agreed to be acquired by AOL for $850 million (congrats everyone!), it also announced an important update to the Bebo Platform (not celebrating too hard, I guess!). As of today, a new “To do” list design on the home page of every Bebo user more prominently displays application invitations and notifications. Previously, they were behind a second tab.

Jessica Alter, Bebo’s head of business development for the platform, said, “We’ve released changes to the users homepage that moved the alerts for app notifications and requests to the top right of the users homepage. The redesign provides apps a top-level placement, bringing additional awareness to your apps.” In addition, Bebo is now showing icons of all apps a user has installed on the profile page.

Alter also said that several additional features are in the works to be released soon:

• A new API call to add tags to photos
• New JavaScript capabilities
• Pre-loading SQL

All of these changes will enhance the platform and be welcome news for developers!