One of the contributors to the success that Facebook has had in the social networking world is the ability for savvy developers to build applications. MySpace has been picking up scraps from the Facebook strategy for some time and has followed suit with the ability to integrate custom applications. Now that MySpace has more than 50 pages of applications, I wanted to do a 10 best MySpace applications post. But beyond the RSS feeder I mentioned earlier and a couple of interesting apps that were also on Facebook (and were better in the Facebook iteration) I just couldn’t do it. Therefore, let’s take a look at some of the high quality applications that have been introduced and what I found when I changed my quest from the 10 best to the 10 worst:
10. Football Scrapbook Frame, http://www.myspace.com/520993626
This application allows you to frame a photo of yourself in a football image. Now, I love football myself, but the quality of the frame combined with the model posing and the sad excuse for graphical editing makes me want to actually skip watching the Super Bowl. I am sure that the developer, whose name is TopRated funny enough, is just trying to get people to download the application by putting the word Football in the title. But this application does absolutely nothing, other than waste space on profiles, take a long time to load and best of all, show your friends that you like football but that you aren’t smart enough to find a better picture to show it (or for that matter upload that picture to MySpace, which is really hard to do apparently).
9. Lover or Loner, http://www.myspace.com/520671795
This application is yet another of the quizzes that have become so commonplace on Facebook and now MySpace. My initial reaction was that it would be bad, but who knew? My guess is that best case, if you are taking this quiz and installing this application on your profile that you are currently a Loner. There is a very high probability though, that the longer you leave this application on your profile, the higher the chance that you will always and forever be alone!
8. Flashy Pink Heart, http://www.myspace.com/518871148
This game is awesome in the very same way that <flash> was awesome back in the 1990′s, when the web was new and you could make things blink on the computer. This game does exactly what it says, it produces a pink heart that is flashy and displays your OMG can’t wait to see it, flashy text!!! But the best part of this application has nothing to do with the application itself, but with the fact that it is so prolific, with well over 1,000 users downloading it and installing it onto their profile!
7. Catch Thife, http://www.myspace.com/520715560
TopRated strikes again in this masterpiece where according to the developer you “try to hit the moving thief in order to send him jail.” I’m not sure what gave it away first: my experiences with this developers applications, the mastery of prepositions in the description or the actual game play. This game single-handedly showed me why Apple reviews all submissions for the iPhone App Store!
6. What Justin bieber, http://www.myspace.com/518694013
Did you ever ask yourself which Justin Bieber song most matches your personality? If so then this application will help prove to all of your friends that you are wearing that chastity belt and if you are over 17, that you are hiding something deeply disturbing with it. Obviously a ploy to get a bunch of email addresses to spam about the latest in viagra pricing, this application is really just another Quiz from the developer called Quizzes.. If it isn’t obvious to you that they are a spammer, then what do you think they are doing by spamming the applications list with so many Quizzes?!?!
5. BFf, http://www.myspace.com/518847077
As if the term BFF wasn’t so 2005, the graphics in this application seek to bring back design elements from clip art CDs that came with Microsoft Office back in the 1990′s. Your friends couldn’t just post something to your profile. No, they needed to actually post to an application. And in order to do so they have to use the application too! Maybe I’m just sad that no one posted to my BFF Comments box? I guess an emoticon is in order to indicate my disappointment here. 
4. Farm Town, http://www.myspace.com/474755864
This game probably has the best game play and some of the better graphics on MySpace (or Facebook for that matter). So why does it show up on this list? Because 671,665 people are active users. The amount of time spent could end most of the worlds problems? Want a cure for cancer, to revitalize run down neighborhoods or find the meaning of life? How about rewrite Windows so it doesn’t suck any more? Nothing will ever happen until all these people uninstall this game and move on to doing something useful with themselves!
3. The Farmer, http://www.myspace.com/445093191
As if Farm Town wasn’t bad enough, now we have to endure Farm Town copy-cats? Really? I don’t think that anything else need be said about this one. Having said that, many of the other applications from this developer are actually quite good. They just had a little moment where they wanted a few extra addresses to harvest!
2. Twitter Sync, http://www.myspace.com/twittersync
This application just doesn’t work. There’s obviously a lot of code and it’s one of the more mature applications on MySpace. But it doesn’t work. If you absolutely must have your tweets show up on your page then consider iTwitter, available at http://www.myspace.com/463617608
1. The API. Makes me wonder if MySpace was in a rush to put something out or what. The privacy controls are good, but the options are far behind what Facebook offers, making me wonder if MySpace just wanted to be able to say they had applications, but not care about the applications that were made (they’re kinda’ like a Palm Pre that way). But the best part is that almost every application out there is made by spammers. The account I setup to test these things is now getting well over 50 spam messages a day. Thanks MySpace!!!
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Integrating WordPress Comments with Facebook
In a constant search for achieving comment nirvana for the sites I manage, I was recently looking into integrating WordPress (and a couple of other CMS engines) with Facebook. The sites are setup to only allow authenticated users to comment and it just seemed like with all of the single-sign on technology out there that it just didn’t have to be so annoying. After installing the OpenID integration it seemed like there still had to be a better way to allow even more people to authentication. How about Facebook?
Facebook has done a lot of work on making their API one of the best in the social networking world. The initial implementation of FBML was a little clunky (a client was an early adopter) but it proved to be one of the things that set them apart from the competition. And the API doesn’t just allow for embedding objects into Facebook, it allows for extending Facebook out as well. One of the best examples of this is for authentication.
Which brings us to actually making it work. The first thing to do is go grab an API key. To do so, visithttp://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php and click on Set Up New Application (orhttp://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php?version=new). Provide the domain name and any other required fields and out pops an API key and a secret. The API key will be exposed but the secret will act as a password of sorts, much the same way many other key exchanges function. Copy these and do not give them out.
Once you have your key, go to your WordPress site and log into the admin page. From there, click on Plugins and then click on Add New. Search for WP-FacebookConnect. Install the one from Adam Hupp and then locate it in your sidebar (it will say Facebook Connect). Click on it and then provide the API Key and Secret and click on Update Options.
Now that it the plugin is installed and configured it’s time to add it to your theme. This part is a little more tricky than most but it can be as simple as a single paste. Copy this into your clipboard:
Now click on Appearance back in the sidebar and then click on Editor. In the Editor scroll towards the bottom (usually) and locate the form that takes in the comments, which likely begins with:
Now paste it in immediately above or somewhere inside the form, which means somewhere below the first line but above the following:
Once done, open one of your pages and you should see the Connect with your Facebook Account icon so you can authenticate using Facebook. You can also move the text around in the box by moving between areas in the comments.php file (in the themes screen). If you don’t see the Facebook icon then try accessing the site from another browser as you might still be logged into your administrative portal.
Finally, consider the strategy that you use for managing comments. You can still hold comments for approval, you can still approve once and give users unbridled commenting love and you can still scan comments for spam using one of the filters for doing so. That is according to you. But you now have an easy-to-authenticate to solution where visitors don’t have to sign up and get an email back, etc. But they can if you want, given that there are still at least 4 or 5 people (I believe they are in deep freeze somewhere) who don’t use Facebook, and you wouldn’t want to alienate them!
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