The Social

Professional networking site LinkedIn's platform, previously a closed offering for select partners, has opened up to developers at large, according to an announcement Monday on the company blog.

Well, sort of. Building an embeddable widget on LinkedIn, unlike Facebook's, still requires a stringent application process. But LinkedIn's own code has now been opened up so that developers can integrate it into their own sites. It's launched a developer site for those interested in features that let site users access their LinkedIn profile and contacts externally. They still have to request a key to get into the platform's application program interface (API), which means that LinkedIn widgets likely will not be coming to office prank-calling Web sites any time soon, despite that they could make it much easier to robo-call your boss and ask if his refrigerator is running.

One of the first participants, for example, is desktop Twitter client TweetDeck, which says that it will soon allow users to plug in their LinkedIn contacts' status updates alongside Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace contacts.

LinkedIn has about 50 million users as of last count.

A mockup of Twitter's new 'retweet API' interface

(Credit: Twitter)

The development team at Twitter has released a mockup of its forthcoming "retweet API"--basically, the first formal way that Twitter has baked retweets, the copying and attribution of other Twitter users' posts, into its own product. It displays the user avatars of members who have retweeted a given tweet below the original, "collapsing" them into a single space.

Some background detail on the forthcoming new API: Retweets have been a mainstay of Twitter for some time now, but the feature was created by users rather than officially. Several third-party Twitter clients have built in retweet buttons, and some apps, such as Tweetmeme, have created a way to tabulate them like a Digg count, but it's never been worked into Twitter's Web site or API.

What's interesting is that the new format, assuming that this is how the timeline ends up looking, can provide a quick, one-glance way to see just how influential a given Twitter user or individual tweet is, adding a new dimension to measuring Twitter influence beyond the follower count. If you see a lot of little retweet icons, for example, you might stop and take a closer look at a tweet (or the user behind that tweet) that you might otherwise have skimmed past.

What's also interesting is that it looks like retweet counts get cut off at 100, with higher ones displayed as simply "100+." I'm guessing that, say, CNN Breaking News generally gets a lot more than that.

When they were announced, the changes to Twitter retweets weren't met with a thoroughly warm reception. "Asking developers to collapse retweets in timelines is onerous, complicated, and confusing," the forum post by Twitter's Marcel Molina said in response to developer concerns that the collapsed-retweet format would do more harm than good. "We're not going to do it that way. We are going to add a resource that gives you all retweets for a given tweet. In timelines, you will get only the first retweet. You can then request all retweets for that tweet at any time to get up to 100 retweets that have been created for it."

On Thursday night, Facebook announced that it's launched its first official Twitter app--sort of. In a post on the company blog, Facebook announced that updates to "fan pages," public profiles for celebrities, brands, organizations, and what-have-you, can now be sent out through Twitter.

"Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who've created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible," the post by Facebook employee Michael Gummelt read. "Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities may want to put out calls for help to both their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers, all at the same time."

This is basically something that many blogging and publishing services already do: offer a way to automatically syndicate a short blurb and a link onto Twitter. It's a no-brainer. But Facebook and Twitter have a complicated history. Facebook attempted to acquire Twitter last year, and Twitter turned the offer down. Then, earlier this summer, Facebook did acquire FriendFeed, a social-network aggregator that failed to gain mainstream traction but pioneered many of the real-time, streaming features that are now central to both Facebook and Twitter.

Relations between the two companies still seem to be a bit shaky. Facebook continues to roll out Twitter-inspired features like a souped-up search engine, a revamped "publisher" tool that can make status updates selectively public, and soon a stripped down "Facebook Lite" site that looks quite a bit like the ultra-basic Twitter.

Much has been said about Facebook and Twitter as the two forces vying for control of the real-time social Web, but little light has been shed on just how central a role the marketing industry has. The fact that Facebook's first Twitter app is exclusively for its brand-marketing "fan pages" highlights this. In the digital marketing world, the buzzworthy place for brands to be right now is Twitter--especially since this week Twitter started to elaborate plans for the paid accounts it's going to offer to businesses by the end of the year. If Facebook is going to continue to court brands effectively, it has to offer a quick and easy way to plug into that all-important "Twitter strategy."

What's less clear is whether Facebook will let ordinary users syndicate their profile updates to Twitter. Currently, they can bring in plenty of data from elsewhere thanks to Facebook's third-party developer API. You can import a Twitter feed into Facebook status updates or use third-party clients like TweetDeck to update Twitter status and Facebook status simultaneously, but you still can't opt to publish your Facebook profile updates elsewhere.

Is Twitter getting possessive of its own name? Maybe.

A developer building an application using Twitter's API was told via e-mail that Twitter took issue with the user interface of his application, allegedly very similar to Twitter's own, as well as his use of the word "tweet" in the application's name.

The developer forwarded the e-mail to TechCrunch: "Twitter, Inc., is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own."

Uh-oh. If Twitter is staking a claim to the word "tweet," that could mean a problem for TweetDeck, TweetMeme, PoliTweets, and some of the other extremely popular businesses built atop Twitter.

A few things to keep in mind here. One, the developer was also creating a service that looked a lot like Twitter, the TechCrunch post explains, which means that the use of the word "tweet" may really have been less important than the e-mail made it out to be. Second, it's a personal e-mail coming from a Twitter employee--not a company representative or executive--which means that it may not be perfectly aligned with the company's official stance on things.

(Case in point: A Twitter investor hinted to The New York Times that the company would be making money with virtual coupons. One of Twitter's co-founders said in a comment on a blog that the investor was "brainstorming on his own.")

But the tech industry does have a history of getting into one skirmish after another over names similar to their trademarks. Several years ago, Apple started sending cease-and-desist letters to some third-party equipment companies and fan blogs that were using the word "pod" in their names. Google, too, has taken issue with the word "googling" being used as a generic verb.

And as TechCrunch points out, Twitter has filed for a trademark on the word "tweet." On the other hand, being possessive of this term (which, it goes without saying, has been a dictionary word for centuries) might not be the smartest strategy, if Twitter indeed wants to be a Digital Age communication standard "like electricity," as one executive said last month. So we'll see how this one unfolds.

UPDATE at 11:49 a.m. PT: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has, as the company's executives often do when there's a rumor flurry about something Twitter's doing, put up a blog post to clarify. The answer, not surprisingly, is that these things are handled on a case-by-case basis.

And "tweet" is not a target, he said.

"We have no intention of 'going after' the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter," Stone assured readers. "In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet."

It's more complicated when developers choose to use the word "Twitter," though it had been a dictionary word long before the microblogging company adopted the term.

"Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well," Stone wrote. "After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with 'Twitter' we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line."

Social music start-up iLike has come a long way from its early days as the way to "dedicate a song" to your friends on Facebook.

On Wednesday, the Seattle-based company plans to unveil some fresh new features for the set of tools it offers to artists who want to connect with current and potential fans. It's hooked up the application program interfaces (APIs) of Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace to allow for more extensive content syndication from artists' iLike pages, and has released an iPhone app-creation product to boost their mobile presences.

"Marketing and communication are the primary things that artists are still in need of a third party's help in," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News. "Music production and distribution, I think, there are pretty successful and well-established services right now that essentially let you do it yourself."

The Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace add-ons are understandable supplements to the existing "artist pages" feature that iLike says more than 300,000 bands and artists now use. With Twitter's API, artists using iLike will be able to embed a Twitter widget on their iLike pages as well as syndicate iLike updates out to their Twitter feeds. They'll also be able to automatically publish a video to YouTube when they publish it to iLike, and vice versa; with the News Corp.-owned MySpace, they can add iLike "RSVP" links to MySpace concert listings and cross-post blogs and videos to both services.

For iLike, which got its start as an iTunes plug-in and now specializes in developer applications for social networks like Facebook, Bebo, and Hi5, this move is another step toward making it a more flexible, distributed alternative to simply running a MySpace band page. iLike, in addition, recently rebranded its Facebook app to simply "Music."

As part of the new feature package, it's also selling artist analytics about where fans are located, how much they interact with iLike pages, and how well individual pieces of content like videos and blog posts perform. That'll cost $99 per year, Partovi said.

But the center of the new iLike offering is the "turnkey system" for creating custom iPhone apps. Basically, this is a relatively quick way for an artist to create an iPhone app that gives fans access to tour dates, iTunes Store purchasing, videos on YouTube, blog entries, and related content.

It's also a new revenue stream for iLike, which will take a cut of the sale of each iPhone app if an artist chooses to charge for it, and will charge an activation fee if the artist chooses to offer the app in the iTunes Store for free. As a launch promotion, that activation fee is currently $99; a formal price will be announced next week.

There might be some advertising down the road, too, though Partovi declined to say when or how. "Our plan in terms of the business model, like everything else we've done, is (to) put it out there and develop adoption, and over time to figure out the best way to monetize it."

Not everyone's going to want to download iPhone apps to keep tabs on every single one of their favorite artists, and while Partovi said that a sort of universal iLike "favorite artists" app isn't yet on the company's iPhone roadmap, he expects there are enough artists with rabid fan bases for the apps to be a success.

"I don't anticipate a whole lot of fans downloading a hundred different apps for their favorite artists," Partovi said, "but for a fan that has a small group of artists that they're really passionate about, there are fans who will want everything that they can get their hands on from that artist."

And what happens if one of the artists pulls a Nine Inch Nails and gets rejected by Apple due to "objectionable" content? iLike is responsible for the submission process, and hence also responsible for what happens in the event of rejection, but Partovi implied that he's keeping his fingers crossed that there won't be an issue. "We're going to take care of the submission," he said. "We can't guarantee approval, per se, but there's common elements from app to app. We're hoping that once we get some traction that it'll be generally easier."

A post on the Facebook developer blog announces the big application program interface (API) update from the social network that was first reported on Sunday night, which it's calling the Open Stream API.

It's the first major implementation of an emerging (read: brand new) open standard called Activity Streams, on which Facebook has been collaborating with developers for the past few months. Basically, what it means is that third-party developers will have access to a feed of all content posted to news feeds--notes, photos, videos, links, "likes" and comments, and activity from other applications built on the social network's platform.

"We've officially moved away from the Web of just blog posts, which a lot of these formats were originally designed for," said open-source developer and advocate Chris Messina, who has been spearheading the development of Activity Streams for about a year now.

"Over time, what I think will happen is (that) you'll see something toward the type of cleverness and ingenuity that has surfaced around the Twitter community, but in a way that is even more expressive and rich," Messina said. "In the case of Twitter, you're just talking about status updates; in the case of Facebook you're talking about a lot of different activities."

Previously, only status updates--the most Twitter-like part of Facebook--were accessible to developers. That's why this announcement likely makes the biggest difference to the creators of social feed aggregation applications like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop.

But because Activity Streams is an open standard, other social-networking and media-sharing applications will be able to use it too. This means that there could be, say, an Adobe Air-based desktop application that brings in updates across photo-sharing applications like Facebook, Flickr, and Photobucket.

Facebook is also targeting different types of developers--specifically mobile and desktop--rather than strictly the Web app developers whose creations made Facebook's platform such a wild success when it debuted two years ago.

"One of the most important stories to tell here is this is the first time that we've ever opened the core Facebook product experience, which was previously called the 'feed' and which we're now calling the 'stream,'" Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin explained to CNET News. "We're especially excited to see the types of desktop applications and the types of mobile applications which developer are going to build for the stream. We've sort of never really allowed this before, so we're pretty excited to see what developers come up with."

Facebook will be holding an event on Monday afternoon in Palo Alto, Calif., to introduce developers to the new API. Presenting at the event will be representatives from Adobe, which is building a Facebook application in its Air runtime environment, and Microsoft, which is doing the same in Silverlight; contact management system Plaxo and third-party app Seesmic Desktop (which already has unveiled its support for the Open Stream) are also presenting.

The "stream" took front-and-center with Facebook's controversial redesign earlier this year. Inspired by the likes of Twitter, the revamped design marked a shift in strategy for Facebook from static profiles to a real-time flow of information. At the same time, it proved unpopular among some users.

But Facebook isn't the only big social-networking player to be implementing Activity Streams. The emerging standard was behind the upgrades to MySpace's MySpaceID product that the News Corp.-owned service launched in March at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.

"It was sort of one of the earlier opportunities we had to take a nascent spec and see it all the way through to launch," MySpaceID product lead Max Engel told CNET News, adding that his team first started working on Activity Streams last September. It's what powers a new MySpace "gadget" for Google as well as its feeds' presence on the upcoming Yahoo homepage redesign.

"It's getting where we need it to be, which is like e-mail: where you can write a POP client and know (that) it works," Engel said. "It's not even a full standard yet, so it's sort of exciting to see so many people get behind something so quickly, and it's definitely indicative of the general momentum of people who are saying we'd rather work open than work closed."

This post was expanded at 11:23 a.m. PT.

A look at the 'My Networks' widget.

(Credit: AOL)

Social networks are front and center in the latest redesign of AOL's AOL.com homepage, which the company announced Thursday and says it will start to gradually roll out to users over the next few weeks (unless they choose to opt in earlier).

A widget (or module, or gadget, or whatever you want to call it) on the new AOL.com features a tabbed interface with updates from five different social-networking and messaging services: AOL's own AIM and Bebo, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. Called "My Networks," the tabs invite members to log into their social profiles and see a limited amount of information--feed and in-box updates from Facebook and MySpace, new Twitter messages, AIM status messages, etc.--as well as links to access the full versions of the apps.

The Facebook credentials, for example, come from the social network's new Facebook Connect service, an extension of its developer API.

These are just the launch partners, AOL executive James Clark told CNET News last week, and more social-networking and messaging services will be added to the lineup over time. "(It's) part of a consistent evolution of opening up," Clark explained, pointing to AOL's addition last month of outside e-mail service alerts to AOL.com. The more dynamic homepage, which also includes an embedded RSS reader, is indicative of a new direction for AOL, he said.

"Traditional portals have gone about as far as they can go," Clark added.

AOL acquired social aggregator Socialthing this year, but has not specifically integrated its technology into the new AOL.com--yet. Clark said that the separate teams have been "comparing notes," though.

Last month, we reported that The New York Times would be expanding its online-media reach with TimesPeople, a sharing and bookmarking feature on the site.

But that's not all for the Gray Lady's digital makeover, Silicon Alley Insider reported Wednesday. Also on the way is a set of application program interfaces (APIs) to get Times data to third-party sites, a custom widget generator that bloggers can use to embed news on their sites, and an expansion of TimesPeople so that it's on the Web site rather than in the form of a Firefox plug-in.

A look at the NYT's forthcoming widget generator.

(Credit: Silicon Alley Insider)

There's also reportedly more in store for Blogrunner, a Techmeme-like start-up that the Times acquired and has worked into its technology coverage to pull in headlines from around the Web. And the Times will be developing iPhone applications for the new app store that Apple will be unveiling with the new iPhone 3G.

What wasn't revealed was a timeline, for the most part. So these remain projects in the works, and we'll likely see gradual beta launches before they're readily available.

MySpace's Data Availability logo.

MySpace is set to release on Thursday the application programming interface (API) for Data Availability, a developer project that the News Corp.-owned social network announced in early May. Through Data Availability, participating social sites can let users synchronize accounts with MySpace profiles, importing public profile data like photos, interests, and friend lists.

Data Availability's formal launch partners are Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and News Corp.'s Photobucket, but with the release of the API, any third-party site can have access to it. Authentication is handled through the OAUTH open standard, and controls have been configured so that a high level of coding expertise is not required.

"Our users spend hours updating and making changes to their profiles, uploading content, and building friend relationships," a post on the MySpace developer blog explained. "With your help that data can now be available to MySpace users no matter where they go on the Internet."

But MySpace's project isn't the only one of its kind: rival Facebook has extended its existing API to encompass data portability in the form of "Facebook Connect," and Google has a new project called Friend Connect designed to bring social credentials to otherwise non-social Web sites.