App. Development

X2line's Audience is Over 2 Million Users (July 2009)

Anatoly Lubarsky — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:54:00 GMT

Back in February 2009 we crossed 1 million users mark across all our applications on all platforms combined (link).

In July (or even in June) we reached 2 million. Right now the number is roughly 2243K total users (with more than 1 million users on Friendster alone).

Right now we have 13 applications with more than 50K users each.

About Twitter Object-Oriented Design

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:05:00 GMT

More than 2 years ago I sort of reversed-engineered and created a Facebook Object-Oriented Diagram which demonstrates relationships of objects and entities used by Facebook. To my surprise this diagram was later used as example by many Facebook development related groups and linked to in blogs.

Today Twitter is a new kid on the block and now I'd like to talk a little bit about Twitter design in terms of object-oriented approach.

In one sentence: twitter design is very simple but not straightforward - a bit unconventional.

In general Twitter has only 2 objects: Status and User. Where Status has a field of User type and User has a field of Status type (it is usually used to indicate the latest user status). One can ask what is the difference between User and [Status].user? Or what is the difference between Status and [User].status? Don't you feel we are going somewhat out of boundaries here?

OK, the main difference is that [Status].user.status is null while [User].status is not null (or [User].status.user is null and [Status].user is not null) and this is the limitation of the Twitter API.

Here comes the weird thing. Let's suppose we have [Status] as input and need to get fully populated [User] as output. The code can go like so:

public User GetUser(Status stts)
{
    User usr = null;

    if (stts != null)
    {
        stts.user.status = stts;
        usr = stts.user;
    }

    return usr;
}

Enjoy :)

Friendster: Approaching 1 Million Users

Anatoly Lubarsky — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:55:00 GMT

We are quickly approaching 1 million users on Friendster. Going to hit 1 million users mark next week or so. It will be our 1st platform so far where we reach 1 million installs.

x2line has 7-8 applications on Friendster with over 50K users each. And still growing.

Go, Friendster!

Baby Toys via Facebook Connect

Anatoly Lubarsky — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:49:00 GMT

I'd like to introduce Baby Toys application which is connected to Facebook via "Connect". Means that this version of Baby Toys is a standalone application while users need to have Facebook account in order to authorize on and use this application. See Chocolate Lovers app which has the same concept.

Still a kid at heart? Send baby toys to friends or put on your profile!

Baby Toys is available inside Facebook canvas as well — Baby Toys on Facebook.

On Baby Toys you are able to send toys to your friends on Facebook, attach toys to your Facebook profile and attach toys to your Facebook emails.

Enjoy :)

Interview on MySpace app dev platform

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:34:00 GMT

In April I gave a short interview to IDG sharing my opinion on MySpace dev. platform here:

MySpace app dev platform still a work in progress.

Participating: Gerardo Capiel, who was recently hired to be vice president of product management for the MySpace Open Platform, Gartner analyst Ray Valdes plus my 2 cents.

"Developing for MySpace is tough because the platform is still not stable; it has many issues and bugs which remain unfixed for months, Lubarsky said via e-mail. In its current state, the platform doesn't give enough confidence to developers."

Chocolate Lovers via Facebook Connect

Anatoly Lubarsky — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:09:00 GMT

I'd like to introduce Chocolate Lovers application which is connected to Facebook via "Connect". Means that this version of Chocolate Lovers is a standalone application while users need to have Facebook account in order to authorize on and use this application.

Love chocolate? Stick chocolate to your profile and send to friends!

On Chocolate Lovers users are able to send their favorite chocolates to their friends on Facebook, stick chocks to their Facebook profile, view their send/receive stats and even more.

Enjoy :)

X2line Crosses 1 Million Application Users

Anatoly Lubarsky — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:19:00 GMT

Somewhere back in January or in February our applications have crossed 1 million users mark (for all apps combined). We are not too excited, however I thought that 1 million is just so pretty rounded number that I should post it here.

We have the best users on the net and I love them all ;)

We still cannot consider ourselves a big fish on social networks. Much work is ahead of us.

BTW, for advertising opportunities feel free to send us email (info@x2line.com).

Top 3 Things Myspace Platform Has to Implement for Developers

Anatoly Lubarsky — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:50:00 GMT

I think that Myspace development platform is much more developer friendly than that of Facebook these days. Mostly because:

Myspace developers participate in developer forums and are responsive. They answer questions and provide feedback to developers.
Myspace application gallery is of better quality due to relatively tough approval process (for example you need to approve each application change).
Myspace has more advertising friendly audience and as a result - better advertisers (and higher CPM).

There are still several obvious basic features Myspace platform should provide for developers. I think that top 3 of these features are:

New section in application gallery sorted by daily active users. Currently there is one section sorted by total installs which doesn't change much — first-movers large apps stay on top. Another section is called "Recently Popular" which means popular among recently submitted apps. Therefore good and popular applications are mostly invisible in the application gallery. Alphabetical section is useless obviously.
Revision of approval policy and process. There are several items in the policy which just don't make sense. One example - all canvas external links should open a new window. I don't mention the fact that all modern browsers support tab-browsing. Myspace folks responsible for approval click each and every ad placed on the canvas page which may cause problems to the publisher, not to mention that many ad platforms just open the ad in the same window.
Better support for iframes - we need support for numerous Myspace extensions to open social (like "invite friends" and "postto") available for external iframes.

Expanding to Hi5

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Hi5 is the most recent platform I'm developing my applications on. Hi5 applications run on Open Social 0.7. From my experience so far with Hi5 I think that despite some glitches their platform is developer friendly enough which makes sense. Some of my applications on Hi5:

Bathroom Stall Vandalism and daygrader run currently on 5 different platforms. In addition I have a couple of other apps live made exclusively for Hi5 and a couple pending for review.

Go Hi5 !

Feel free to add me as a friend on Hi5.

Daygrader is Live on Myspace

Anatoly Lubarsky — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:41:00 GMT

Following Bathroom Stall Vandalism approval, today Daygrader is available for Myspace users as well. It has been approved and Myspace users can now discover and install Daygrader from Myspace Application Directory.

Daygrader runs currently on Facebook, Bebo, Friendster and Myspace.

Daygrader allows you to rate your life day after day on ABCDF scale.

Go Myspace !