Ringside Explained

Abstract

Ringside is middleware that allows you to widgetize a Facebook or Open Social application and provide it to any website via an iframe or JS snippet. Ringside extends the full functionality and social graph that exists in the application to whatever community it is installed to. Additionally it provides a full analytics package.

Narrative

Defined

Ringside is a social application server. A social application server serves applications built for social graph providers (Facebook and OpenSocial).

Usage

1. Point social graph providers (Facebook, MySpace, etc..) at Ringside (trust.php) instead of their application
2. Point Ringside at their application.

The end user will not know Ringside is involved, but developers and site owners will gain valuable analytics and a widget engine to extend applications beyond social graph providers.

Value proposition

The widget engine allows the application to extend itself using a social graph into any site (Johnson&Johnson, Coca-Cola, etc..) via an iframe.

• Website owners gain application functionality with immediate traction from an existing social graph and users.
  • The widget engine brings the audience of any application to niche sites not already connected to a social graph (or the site has their own graph - Drupal).
• Developers gain an infinitely large landscape that is the open web to spread their applications where more niche audiences might exist - with or without their own social graph, but perhaps more active in the niche that the application pertains to (accessing an application in the context of a Running store as opposed to Facebook).
• End users gain data portability as they see their apps in more domains.

Advanced Usage

Application developers can configure custom HTML tags so they website owners can customize every detail of the widget layout and functionality. Custom HTML tags allows for a new breed of light weight applications designed as HTML tags for use in other websites. For example, a developer might make a tag available called rs:suggestions. The site owner could then implement the tag as follows:

<rs:suggestions topic='<?php print $topics[$i]; ?>' />

Notice that the tag, though cognizant of the logged in user, is focused on the context of content rather than just that user. In other words, instead of giving suggestions to a user, a user can give suggestions within the context of whatever element on any website that a site owner chooses. Suddenly, social applications can extend their functionality beyond the canvases of social graph providers like Facebook and MySpace in very meaningful ways.

Glossary