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Ringside Networks To Unveil Social App Server 44

eWeekPete writes "Ringside Networks tomorrow will formally launch as a company and also launch what it calls the first open-source social application server that seamlessly integrates Facebook applications with any Web site. The Ringside Social Application Server includes a Social Application Engine that enables Web site developers to quickly build, customize, and deploy their own social applications as well as the included set of standard social applications such as user profiles, friends, groups, comments, ratings, favorites, and events. Ringside also delivers support for federated social graphs for integrating Ringside-based social graphs with other social networks, such as Facebook. In addition, the product features an extensible API and tag library to enable developers to extend Facebook's API and markup language, as well to as define their own application-specific APIs and tags to handle custom behavior and improve Web site integration." Matt Asay had an advance look at Ringside a few days back.
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Ringside Networks To Unveil Social App Server

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  • Amazing! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24, 2008 @07:12PM (#22851682)
    It can also integrate buzzwords into story summaries with ease! Think of the synergy!
    • by weighn ( 578357 )

      It can also integrate buzzwords into story summaries with ease! Think of the synergy!
      Should be great for the incremental subsumption of so'net knowledge users, especially now that the right-sized pricing structure has received a homogeneous definition which should be an enabler and champion of the leverage of the competitors' customers.
  • Great. (Score:3, Funny)

    by rpdelaney ( 1256672 ) on Monday March 24, 2008 @07:12PM (#22851692)
    Now I feed my addiction to the facebook virus without even logging in.
  • Well (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Joseph1337 ( 1146047 )
    Facebook and Myspace - the AIDS and HIV of the cyber age... nothing better than a virtual friends
    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      The analogy doesn't make sense and actually at least with Facebook it ISN'T virtual friends unlike old fashioned web forums. It is real friends. But good job tricking some dimwit with modpoints into thinking your comment was relevant or thoughtful.
      • by mdwh2 ( 535323 )
        The analogy doesn't make sense and actually at least with Facebook it ISN'T virtual friends unlike old fashioned web forums. It is real friends. But good job tricking some dimwit with modpoints into thinking your comment was relevant or thoughtful.

        I agree, and I'm surprised at the moderation too - the irony of people on Slashdot joking about only having online friends! Maybe just because they don't have any friends IRL, they assume everyone else must be like them.

        It's not 1990 anymore - since just about eve
      • by ubrgeek ( 679399 )
        The only reason I can think that this would be modded "flamebait" is because the parent somehow found a way around the "no modding stories to which you post a comment."
      • Metamods: this isn't flamebait. Read the parent.
        • by Ciarang ( 967337 )
          Metametamods: the parent was referring to the parent of the parent when he said "this", and the parent of the parent of the parent when he said "the parent".
    • by mdwh2 ( 535323 )
      Facebook and Myspace - the AIDS and HIV of the cyber age... nothing better than a virtual friends

      - says User Joseph1337 posting to Slashdot.
  • by FatSean ( 18753 ) on Monday March 24, 2008 @07:34PM (#22851858) Homepage Journal
    Every facebook app seems to be one four basic apps with tweaked graphics and settings.
    • by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Monday March 24, 2008 @08:12PM (#22852110)
      And all of them (apparently) live stream your personal data to every advertiser on the planet.
      • by jimmux ( 1096839 )

        So let me get this right. I can't access someone's details if they choose to block me or only show their friends. But if I'm an advertiser I can access whatever personal data I want. So if I (hypothetically) wanted to stalk someone, I should just become an advertiser. And how would I go about doing this? A... friend would like to know.

        But seriously, does being open source present privacy issues? For example, my understanding is that it is not possible for Facebook applications to track visitors to a perso

    • You obviously haven't seen the super-duper-ultimate-your-collection-quiz-poke application then

      </sarcasm>
    • But now you can run pirates vs cavemen on your own server.
    • I'm somewhat of the same opinion, but I actually do use and enjoy the Friends for Sale! app. It's a rather novel idea: you trade your friends around like stocks or something and try to come out on top.
  • by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday March 24, 2008 @07:42PM (#22851912) Homepage
    If it's being released tomorrow, why not post the story tomorrow when the site [ringsidenetworks.com] will actually work? (Usually people complain about Slashdot being a day behind all the other news sites, so this is a new one for me.)

    Also, this is a Slashvertisement.
  • eventually (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it's going to happen: we will have enough of Facebook, our addiction will dry up and we want to be faceless again.
    • It's already started with Anonymous. Due to the increasing popularity from the church of scientology protests, it's only a matter of time before people start seeing that they can actually do things as a group without knowing who else is in the group.

      Afterwards though, everyone will probably get fed up with anonymity and want to have the "latest cool things" like usernames or personal identification.

      More on topic though, will this app server gather personal information from the webpages you visit? Maybe even
  • I'm not a web app developer nor do I get heavily into the social websites but I have a subscription to Linux Journal so I've heard and read about OpenSocial through Reuven Lerner's column. I did skim over the article and it did state a later version of this application engine will support compatibility with OpenSocial. But the question I have to those who know more about these types of things, which one (Ringside or OpenSocial) is really the better app? If I'd have to guess I'd say OpenSocial but maybe Ring
  • ... read this and think this was supposed to be a way to setup wireless networks at boxing matches?
    • No but since your interpretation is more interesting than facebook i'll pretend that its really the case.
  • The article is all about running such a server to add a social network to a website, but does it ease creation of open source desktop applications for social networking (ie. where the user has their own database stored on their machine)? It also mentions the ability to talk to Facebook and in the future others, but can they talk to each other in a seamless way (which would be needed to make the first point have any use)?
  • I wonder if these guys have considered going into some honest business, say, producing voting machines?

    Seriously, I'd like to karma troll by making fun of this product, but it seems such a mind-bogglingly purposeless marketing riff on the "social networking" BS that I can't.

    Repeat after me: there is no business model here other than taking investors' money in a complex variation of the Ponzi scheme and "irrational exuberance." There is no real money or value added by this product. classDef(this(prod
    • You saying the myspace doesn't make enough money from the ads it displays to cover their costs? Not that I enjoy anything about myspace, but I don't think all of their revenue is from investors anymore. Just a guess.
  • I think Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic who Bob Bickel, Ringside Networks CEO is a board member to summed it up nicely:

    There's a lot of talk these days about social networking and SaaS 'platforms'. Companies expose API's to their services and encourage people to build integrated apps which leverage the power of a CRM (like Salesforce) or social (like OpenSocial or Facebook) platforms into their apps. The nature of this integration typically involves two applications running on separate infrastructure, talkin

  • I have *no* evidence of problems with this product, but given the security holes that have popped up with bulletin-board and blogging software over the past couple of years, this sort of DIY server with that many features bolted on would make me a little skittish about future security holes.

    Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to be antisocial. :-)
  • The key feature seems to be "In other words, the Ringside platform allows business owners to gain insight into the social graph of users, relationships, groups, interactions, and sharing that is occurring on their Web site". Right. More targeted ads.

    I have a browser extension [sitetruth.com] that monitors advertiser (not user) behavior and reports it to a server. I mentioned this over on Search Engine Watch, where the Adwords crowd hangs out. Anger, threats, intimidation... The idea that someone is tracking advertis

  • we are going to have FootBook, HandBook, Bodybook.......fill in the list!
  • And so it is with great sadness that I have to forgo tagging this story 'slashvertisement'.
  • in relation to servers that do specifically social stuff, it's worth checking out the current dataportability implementations [dataportability.org]. using facebooks methods for doing these kinds of things is just wrong.
  • It occurs to me that "The Power of Social Networking" becomes rather diluted once people split into what will be a plethora of different social networking sites. Even now it's like, "I'm on Facebook, what are you doing on MySpace?" Unless the *accounts* are all linked, there's no great advantage I see to just making the apps available to any such site. Great for the advertisers that run the apps, sure, more coverage to them. But it won't improve the social-networking scene in any way for users. It'll j

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