MySpace Launches New Features for MySpaceID; Functionality Live Today

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MySpace, the world’s premiere social portal, today launched new functionality for MySpaceID, a product that allows any website to access the MySpace social graph, enabling any user to securely link their MySpace profile, friends, and activities with their favorite websites. MySpaceID also launched developer access to MySpace user activity streams and a seamless authentication experience for sites across the web as well as a new developer workflow and MySpaceID SDKs. Additionally, today MySpace announced a MySpaceID implementation, currently in limited testing on the new Yahoo! homepage. The MySpace application is one of several new “Apps” Yahoo! recently began testing as part of its new Yahoo! homepage, enabling users to check-in and keep up to date with the information and people they care about most. The launch marks a significant milestone for MySpaceID.

“The MySpace App, currently in testing on the new Yahoo! homepage, adds new social functionality to the Yahoo! experience by using MySpaceID to connect Yahoo! users to their MySpace network. By logging into MySpace from the new App right on the Yahoo! homepage, users get quick access to their MySpace friend updates, friend requests, and can manage their MySpace status, mood and more – all while catching up on their other activities on Yahoo!,” said Jason Oberfest, senior vice president of business development and general manager of the MySpace Open Platform. “By working with Yahoo! we have been able to take a big step forward in evolving the open Web—we are very pleased to be working with them.”

With these enhancements, MySpace is the first major social network to have the full "Open Stack" implemented where information is flowing to partner websites based on completely open Web standards. MySpace now offers full OpenID-support on every custom user URL, and is also the first major party to leverage the new activity streams open specification. Previously announced functionality of MySpaceID includes finding MySpace friends on a partner site and linking user’s MySpace profile to the profile on a partner site.

“We believe MySpace users should be in control of their personal and portable social identity whenever they travel online,” said Max Engel, product lead for MySpaceID. “MySpaceID offers developers and Websites a package where they can pick and choose the functionality and features they want to implement on their site – all built on open standards which ensure compatibility and provide access to continued community innovation.”

New MySpaceID Features Include:

Activity Stream

User activities from MySpace can now be streamed to any site on the Web-- increasing user engagement on partner sites and providing more social context to users. In addition, partner sites can filter MySpace user activities by activity feed type; photos, events, music, and more. For example, a photo-sharing site could choose to display activities specific to photo uploading, photo tagging, and photo album creation.

Easy Authentication

MySpace has integrated both OAuth and OpenID into MySpaceID, enabling MySpace users to securely login to any website that uses MySpaceID using their MySpace credentials. The combination of OAuth and OpenID will allow MySpace users to easily and safely sign into participating websites and bring their MySpace identity with them. This helps to solve the problem of username and password fatigue. All of this can happen with a click of a button, where a user only has to enter their MySpace credentials in order to login to a partner website.

Developer Resources (Workflow and MySpaceID SDKs)

The new MySpaceID workflow makes it easier for developers to create and manage their applications. It streamlines the build process and makes configuring an application easier than ever. MySpace is also introducing the Beta release of “MySpaceID SDKs,” which lowers the barrier of entry for companies and developers onto the MySpace Open Platform. MySpaceID SDKs are a set of client libraries written in the most popular programming languages that utilize existing Open Source projects. They facilitate a streamlined, easier way to connect to MySpace from existing applications using MySpaceID or build on top of the MySpace Application platform. Libraries are initially being released in PHP, Python, Ruby, .NET and Java, with additional libraries planned in the future for Cocoa and Android.

MySpaceID is part of the MySpace Open Platform, a suite of products also including the MySpace Apps and Post-To MySpace. MySpaceID allows a site to lower the barrier-to-entry for new users and creates an easy way to tap into the MySpace social backend to build compelling new features and functionality. It is convenient and secure for users, and for Websites it can deliver a higher conversion rate on signup flows while getting more useful data from the user. By allowing users to link their MySpace account, sites can enable social functionality:

• Register on partner sites using his or her MySpace credentials (New Today)
• View MySpace friend updates on partner sites (New Today)
• Publish MySpace activities to friends on partner websites (New Today)
• Discover MySpace friends on a partner site (Available)
• Connect MySpace profile data to partner sites (Available)
• Provide a dashboard that allows users to have a window into their life on MySpace (Available)

In addition to these currently available features, users will also soon be able to publish activities from partner sites into MySpace for friends to see. For more information on MySpaceID please visit: http://www.myspace.com/MySpaceID.

The new Yahoo! homepage is currently being tested by a small percentage of Yahoo! users in advance of a public beta, and more information is available at: http://ycorpblog.com/2009/02/13/update-on-our-new-homepage-testing/.

About MySpace

MySpace is the world’s leading social portal for connecting people, content, and culture. MySpace empowers its global community to experience the Internet through a social lens by integrating personal profiles, photo sharing, professional and viral videos, blogs, mobile, instant messaging, and the world’s largest music community. MySpace is the highest trafficked website in the United States and includes an international network of more than 30 local community sites throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corporation. (NYSE:NWS) (NYSE:NWS.A) (ASX:NWS) (ASX:NWSLV).

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