IFrame, Facebook, OpenSocial, Widget, Ringside

With Ringside Beta-4 release, by default we support 5 application types out of the box.

IFrame - Similar to the Faceook IFrame application and protocol.

Facebook - Plug your Facebook applications in! Deploy facebook applications with your own network. (example included by default is Footprints)

OpenSocial - Deploy open social applications right next to Facebook apps. Example includes Hello World written by Bill Reichardt and one from Last.FM. Bill published a trail map of how creating and hosting open social applications is possible.

FBML Widget - Use this widget on any website and have FBML rendered from anywhere, no application required. Bill put together a tutorial on using this capability - FBML on any website.

Ringside - Deploy applications directly inside the Ringside platform, we call them system level apps. All of the web features such as the community panel, login, registration, friends are delivered as system applications. The stylecheck application listed in the image is a system application.



In there are two open social applications, one written by Bill Reichardt and the other integrating a open social application by Last.FM.

Deploying your social applications with the Ringside platform enables a single application to be located on any website, community or social network. Users can access the applications anywhere and their data is portable across the web (the open web).

Rich @ Ringside

We All Scream for Ice Cream

I like how Facebook helped extend Ben and Jerry's brand awareness. They were able to use the power of a brand and a social network to make a media campaign connected. While TV spots give visibility and Google Ads extend that with a link for the consumer, Facebook is able to engage the user with the brand.

"Our users tell a lot about themselves, that gives us the opportunity" to work with advertisers, she said. One successful example of this, she said, was a promotion by Ben & Jerry's that resulted in 500,000 Facebook users giving each other free ice cream cones within 11 hours. That day, the Ben & Jerry's Web site picked up 53 million impressions, as people searched for store locations and wrote about their favorite flavors, she said.

I wonder if we could push further on this and allow the social interaction to be more open to other websites and applications . A similar experience could have been offered from Ben and Jerry's website. Maybe I should be able to share an Ice Cream directly from their store locator view. The second expansion would be to enable this feature through any application. There are 20,000 applications at Facebook, enabling them to participate in the social campaign might just further the engagement and virality.

If the application was deployed at Ben and Jerry's ,depicted to the right, then the interaction might have the opportunity to be further reaching. Another possible advantage is the campaign could be re-run on other social networks and other websites tailored for specific communities.

I think it is further expansion of applications into many web sites, communities and social networks which will further drive the idea of an open social web.

Rich @ Ringside