MySpace has announced support for OpenID and data sharing with Eventful and Flixster. All three moves are part of MySpace's efforts to share its eco-system with an increasingly more open social web environment
OpenID allows users to sign into mulitple web sites with a single log-in. On Eventful, users can now populate their profiles with MySpace photo, name, interests and more. Those who connect profiles to MySpace will automatically get Eventful alerts when their favorite act plays nearby with favorites based on which artists they have friended on MySpace. Eventful also recently added a MyTopArtist widget that allows fans to share favorite artist choices on their MySapce page. Both efforts increase the importance of acts keeping tour dates up to date on Eventful.
Flixster, a movie fan site, is using MySpace data availability...
to allow instant sign-on and friend connections for users with active MySpace accounts. Users are able to register for the Flixster site, populate their profile information and find their other friends from MySpace all without having to re-enter any information from their MySpace profile. Flixster and MySpace will then continue to sync information for as long as the user maintains a profile on both sites. Users keep complete control of what information they want to share and can unlink the accounts at any time.
FOR DEVELOPERS ONLY -
MySpace also announced enhancements to its Data Availability initiative for developers to allow caching and storage. Responding to developer feedback, MySpace introduced changes to Data Availability that will allow developers to store a users’ core profile, called the ‘portable profile,’ and cache all of the MySpace API’s for a 24 hour period of time for data fetched through the MySpace REST services. Items that are cacheable for a 24 hour period and must be removed when the cache expires are About me, Body type, Children, Drinker, Ethnicity, Has app, Heroes, ID, Interests, Jobs, Looking for, Movies, Music, Name, Network presence, Profile song, Profile URL, Relationship status, Religion, Sexual orientation, Smoker, Status and TV shows.
MySpace also allows developers to store certain core elements of user's profiles. MySpace understands that having portable profile data is essential to giving users greater freedom with their online identity and has created granular scoping through OAuth to give the user control over what is shared. A user’s portable profile includes Age, Current location, Date of Birth, Gender, Nickname, Thumbnail URL, and only if the user has scoped access – Email, First Name, and Last Name.
More info @ www.developer.myspace.com.
