2012 jiveworld: building successful apps and platforms

The OpenSocial Lessons

Building Successful Apps & Platforms

Jonathan LeBlancDeveloper Evangelist (PayPal)

jleblanc@paypal.comTwitter: @jcleblanc

Github: github.com/jcleblanc

The Application is Dead

The Draining Application Industry

Embedded Experiences are the New Apps

User Feed

Contextual Events

Other Services

My Social Background

Author of Programming Social Applications

Emmy award winner for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology

Helped build Yahoo’s social platform

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

The Beginning

+

The “We’re Everything” Days

The Social Days

vs

The Current State

A Renewed Focus on Businesses and the Enterprise

- OpenSocial State of the Union 2012 (Portland, OR)

Why OpenSocial?

Open source initiatives provide an excellent “get started quickly” technology base.

Multiple company base and security hardened over years of development

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

Heavy Security Model: Caja / Stripping

Manual Security Model: Checking Apps

How Things Currently Work

Enterprise Security Model

Iframe + API / SDK

Embedded Experiences

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

Outreach Channels for Growth

Data Information Channels and Hooks

The Platform for App Gamification

Relationships / Gamification Lessons

Understanding your users and their behaviors is a key to success

Not all outreach channels can be treated the same way

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

User Authentication / Authorization

OAuth 2

OpenID and OpenID Connect

Persona

User Information Management

Personalization

Abstraction Lessons

Focus on several core features of your technology offerings, not the entire stack

Abstract out difficult to implement technologies with SDKs / APIs

The Sordid History of OpenSocial

Security Versus Usability

Relationships and Gamification

Abstracting out the Icky Bits

Why Applications Fail & Prevention

The Lineup

Re-inventing the Wheel

“I have a great idea! Let’s just build our own application platform!”

- That guy (you know who I’m talking about!)

Ignoring Existing Users

“If you build it, they will come”

- The Management Team

Ignoring Usability

“We have the most secure platform out there”

- The architect who has never built an application

Ignoring Your Community

“We don’t need to spend resources supporting forums, our developers will help each other out”

- The misguided development team

It All Comes Together

Pay attention to outreach!

Build your platform / application to scale and change easily

Understand your users and their habits

Thank You! Any Questions?http://www.slideshare.net/jcleblanc

Jonathan LeBlancDeveloper Evangelist (PayPal)

jleblanc@paypal.comTwitter: @jcleblanc

Github: github.com/jcleblanc