Ning.com is becoming quite popular. It seems people still want their own social network and what better place to do it than on Ning.com.  After create their Ning account, they quickly realize that in order to stand out and get going they need customizations and custom development. As a result we do some amount of Ning customization, template design and application development.

Here are three common customization and integration points:

• Template Customization via CSS
  This involves using CSS to create (or recreate) your own look-and-feel and branding on Ning. As far as social networking platform go, Ning is reasonably customizeable CSS and with the help of Firefox addon-on Firebug and EditCSS, the process is generally straight forward.
• Customization and App Development via Javascript
  Ning allows you to add a Javascript footer at the bottom of your page (via Manage -> Analytics) for the purpose of supporting tracking and analyics. A while back we discovered a little trick we like to exploit for clients. Guess what..you can put any old Javascript there. This essentially allows to use Javascript to customize your Ning page. Yes..you can actually remove the Google ads and modify almost anything using some Javascript trickery. Check out a our free test account (shows how you can use Javascript to remove or replace ads). Using this mechanism you can add banners, graphics, iframes and pretty do anything to the page.
• OpenSocial Applications
  Ning supports OpenSocial applications, but unfortunately users can only add them to their My Page. OpenSocial applications cannot be used (at least right now) on the Main or other primary Ning pages.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I was last in the Google’s OpenSocial API. We are in the process of porting yet another Facebook application to MySpace using OpenSocial. Fortunately we wrote the original FB App with portability in mind.

Facebook vs. OpenSocial
The Facebook API and OpenSocial API use very different models making reuse very difficult. At its core, Facebook uses a Server-side proxied web application model. The Facebook server talks to your PHP-based application (which uses XML-REST API to get info from Facebook) and displays the results. OpenSocial uses a Client-Side Javascript widget model where applications are written in Javascript and get information via a Javascript API. Any external communication is done using an AJAX-like API function but all the logic is on the client-side.  As a result, the development models are very different for both!

Here are a couple of suggestions to make your Facebook applications more “portable”:

• Do not use the Facebook datastore, store preferences and application data in your own database
• Decouple “data” pages (pages used to generate data) from your Facebook application and access the data using includes or AJAX calls, make sure your “date” pages are stand alone and do not generate any FBML.
• Design your Facebook application to retrieve all data/information using AJAX.  This take my previous point to its logical limit but since OpenSocial users Javascript/AJAX for all of its data retrieval you’ll be in great shape.
• Organize your libraries to separate Facebook related functions

Quite often we get the request: “I want a widget”. Although most people making that request have an good idea of what platform they want their widget deployed on, some don’t. Here is a quick look at some of the common widget platforms options available, their pros and cons, and other important considerations:

• Flash-based Web Widgets: This remains the most common platform for widget development. Widgets built in Flash are generally designed to be embedded on social networks, blogs and other web pages (by simply cutting and pasting a snippet of HTML code). They can be distributed directly or using a Widget marketplace or distribution platform. About 80% of the actual widgets we build fall into this category.
  

• Other Web-based Widgets: There are a number of other web-based start pages, portals and communities that prospective clients are sometimes interested in developing widgets for. These include services like iGoogle, Windows Live.com, Pageflakes and Netvibes. Widgets built for specific web-based services are generally are generally not portable across services. We usually build widgets in a way that increases the likelihood reuse (since most services support some flavor of Javascript), additionally some services, like Netvibes, have “wrappers” that allow them to be used in other start-pages.
  
  See more comprehensive lists…

• Desktop Widgets: Desktop widget platforms include Yahoo! Widgets, MacOS X Widgets, Microsoft Vista Gadgets and Google Desktop Gadgets. Widgets built for these platforms are designed to run on a user’s desktop. As a result, they are generally are not spread virally or via “drive-by” marketing. Prospective clients evaluating or considering desktop widget platforms are usually driven by specific customer requests or applications. Most widgets built for a desktop platform require that the user first install a widget engine (Windows Vista and MacOS are exceptions), a process that can be time consuming and can pose a barrier to adoption.
  
  See more comprehensive lists…

• Facebook Application: Although a a widget can be embedded in a Facebook (FB) application, a FB app is “technically” not a widget – its a lot more. When building “widgets” for the FB platform, most people are talking about developing a Flash-based widget and then build a FB application to “contain” it (the are some limitations). The alternative is to ditch the widget idea and simply build a full featured FB app that takes full advantage of the platform.

  

• Other Social Media Applications: This involves building applications or “porting” existing Flash-based widgets to platforms like OpenSocial (for MySpace, Hi5, Orkut and others) and Ning. Unless you have a compelling reason for doing this, you are probably better off with one of the other options.
  
  See more comprehensive lists…

So What Widget Do I Need?
Hopefully you have already answered that question. The platform (or platforms) you select to develop and deploy your widget(s) on depends on the following:

• who your target customer is (consumer, customer, enterprise, prospects, i.e.)

• the purpose of the widget (marketing or utility)

• what your marketing or customer acquisition goals are (related to purpose)

• how you envision the widget being used and distributed (is it viral?, i.e.)

Clients interested in solving marketing, awareness and branding problems are usually interested in Web-based widgets (or social media applications) that are often seen, easily spread and hopefully come with a compelling reason for folks “driving-by” to spread them.

Clients interested in using widgets to deliver utility or functionality or extend an existing application, are probably most interested in Desktop widgets.

Clients that want marketing exposure on numerous widget marketplaces (WidgetBox, Netvibes, Yahoo! Widgets, i.e.) are probably going to want to build smaller (feature poor) widgets on a technology (Flash, i.e.) that works on multiple platforms.

Clients targeting “paying” or enterprise customers are probably looking at specific desktop widget platforms.

More Widget Platform Information
I hope this answers some of the questions people about widget platforms. I have also created a section (wiki.metablocks.com/widget-platforms) on the Metablocks Wiki dedicated to tracking relevant widget development platforms, feel free to check it out.

Tags: facebook, opensocial, ning, widgets, flash, google, netvibes

MySpace is finally ready to launch its OpenSocial-based development platform. According to Mashable, developers can now submit applications for review and the first set of approved applications will be available to users on March 13! In January, I talked about MySpace and OpenSocial in one of my previous post Facebook Platform vs. OpenSocial. Although it was announced last November, Google’s OpenSocial partners are only starting to launch their platform initiatives with 3 large sites (MySpace, Google’s Orkut and Hi5) launching over the next month! MySpace’s Jim Benedetto did a great job at the O’Reilly Graphing Social Patterns conference outlining MySpace’s upcoming platform’s strategy.

When Facebook launched its f8 application platform it experienced a 37% increase in growth and the number of available application quickly grew to over 10,000 by the end of year. It is going to be interesting to watch MySpace’s OpenSocial platform roll out as far as the number of applications being developed and if they do indeed bring users back to the site.