Slashdot Mirror
Ringside Networks To Unveil Social App Server
eWeekPete writes "Ringside Networks tomorrow will formally launch as a company and also launch what it calls the first open-source social application server that seamlessly integrates Facebook applications with any Web site. The Ringside Social Application Server includes a Social Application Engine that enables Web site developers to quickly build, customize, and deploy their own social applications as well as the included set of standard social applications such as user profiles, friends, groups, comments, ratings, favorites, and events. Ringside also delivers support for federated social graphs for integrating Ringside-based social graphs with other social networks, such as Facebook. In addition, the product features an extensible API and tag library to enable developers to extend Facebook's API and markup language, as well to as define their own application-specific APIs and tags to handle custom behavior and improve Web site integration." Matt Asay had an advance look at Ringside a few days back.
It can also integrate buzzwords into story summaries with ease! Think of the synergy!
Now I feed my addiction to the facebook virus without even logging in.
Facebook and Myspace - the AIDS and HIV of the cyber age... nothing better than a virtual friends
Every facebook app seems to be one four basic apps with tweaked graphics and settings.
Blar.
slow news day ? first we have a games spammers site on the front page and now we have to read press releases from crappy facebook leech companies on an advert infested eweak site.
Still at least we know what sites to block when reading stories here
If it's being released tomorrow, why not post the story tomorrow when the site will actually work? (Usually people complain about Slashdot being a day behind all the other news sites, so this is a new one for me.)
Also, this is a Slashvertisement.
Biting chumps now possible on every website you can imagine. That is after you blog it and digg it.
it's going to happen: we will have enough of Facebook, our addiction will dry up and we want to be faceless again.
And all of them (apparently) live stream your personal data to every advertiser on the planet.
You obviously haven't seen the super-duper-ultimate-your-collection-quiz-poke application then
</sarcasm>
I'm not a web app developer nor do I get heavily into the social websites but I have a subscription to Linux Journal so I've heard and read about OpenSocial through Reuven Lerner's column. I did skim over the article and it did state a later version of this application engine will support compatibility with OpenSocial. But the question I have to those who know more about these types of things, which one (Ringside or OpenSocial) is really the better app? If I'd have to guess I'd say OpenSocial but maybe Ringside offers things that OS doesn't. Can anyone provide a quick compare/contrast?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
But now you can run pirates vs cavemen on your own server.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I'm somewhat of the same opinion, but I actually do use and enjoy the Friends for Sale! app. It's a rather novel idea: you trade your friends around like stocks or something and try to come out on top.
The government can't save you.
... read this and think this was supposed to be a way to setup wireless networks at boxing matches?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The article is all about running such a server to add a social network to a website, but does it ease creation of open source desktop applications for social networking (ie. where the user has their own database stored on their machine)? It also mentions the ability to talk to Facebook and in the future others, but can they talk to each other in a seamless way (which would be needed to make the first point have any use)?
I wonder if these guys have considered going into some honest business, say, producing voting machines?
Seriously, I'd like to karma troll by making fun of this product, but it seems such a mind-bogglingly purposeless marketing riff on the "social networking" BS that I can't.
Repeat after me: there is no business model here other than taking investors' money in a complex variation of the Ponzi scheme and "irrational exuberance." There is no real money or value added by this product. classDef(this(product)) does not allow companies to build upon or "capitalize" their existing social networks (etc etc): it allows them to say they're following all the other lemmings.
Repeat grump as necessary.
So let me get this right. I can't access someone's details if they choose to block me or only show their friends. But if I'm an advertiser I can access whatever personal data I want. So if I (hypothetically) wanted to stalk someone, I should just become an advertiser. And how would I go about doing this? A... friend would like to know.
But seriously, does being open source present privacy issues? For example, my understanding is that it is not possible for Facebook applications to track visitors to a person's profile. This is done deliberately and some would argue that Facebook is all the better for it. Is it possible that this could change?
I have *no* evidence of problems with this product, but given the security holes that have popped up with bulletin-board and blogging software over the past couple of years, this sort of DIY server with that many features bolted on would make me a little skittish about future security holes.
:-)
Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to be antisocial.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
The key feature seems to be "In other words, the Ringside platform allows business owners to gain insight into the social graph of users, relationships, groups, interactions, and sharing that is occurring on their Web site". Right. More targeted ads.
I have a browser extension that monitors advertiser (not user) behavior and reports it to a server. I mentioned this over on Search Engine Watch, where the Adwords crowd hangs out. Anger, threats, intimidation... The idea that someone is tracking advertisers, instead of users, just drives some of them nuts.
we are going to have FootBook, HandBook, Bodybook.......fill in the list!
And so it is with great sadness that I have to forgo tagging this story 'slashvertisement'.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Funny, the most antisocial comment on a story about being social. But I guess I can understand how a group famously known for not getting along with others would not see the purpose in social software.
in relation to servers that do specifically social stuff, it's worth checking out the current dataportability implementations. using facebooks methods for doing these kinds of things is just wrong.
MilkMiruku
It occurs to me that "The Power of Social Networking" becomes rather diluted once people split into what will be a plethora of different social networking sites. Even now it's like, "I'm on Facebook, what are you doing on MySpace?" Unless the *accounts* are all linked, there's no great advantage I see to just making the apps available to any such site. Great for the advertisers that run the apps, sure, more coverage to them. But it won't improve the social-networking scene in any way for users. It'll just split them up more.
How funny. Hello Mr Ringside Networks.