OpenSocial is a technique which allows you to create a small, interactive gadget which can be added to a Hyvers’ profile page. The gadget is a small piece of code which is hosted on your own web server or the web server of a hosting company and is not hosted by Hyves, but we do cache them every day.

There are different possibilities when creating a gadget for Hyves. Some gadgets are really simple, others are really advanced. We like to say: The sky is the limit!

With OpenSocial you can use the social data from own profile, the social data of your friends who have installed the same gadget on their profile but also retrieve data from a database to store information such as high scores and preferences of a specific user. This way it’s possible for a Hyver to customize his own gadget. Next to this you could also integrate other external sources such as XML feeds to create a content rich gadget. It’s also very simple to share a gadget with friends and let them spread the word through the Hyves-social-network.

If you’re a developer, you can start developing right away! All you need to have is a basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript and of course a good idea. If you want to create a gadget, but you’re still looking for inspiration, have a look at our Gadget gallery. Once your gadget is completed, you can add it to the live environment. From this moment it’s possible to add it to your profile and share it with friends.

Note: Only the developer can add his own gadget to the live-environment of Hyves. We cannot add it for you.
We encourage all Hyvers to use OpenSocial to create gadget for Hyves. It’s not possible to add an embed gadget or iframe gadget on Hyves unless there’s a strong reason why it’s not possible to create this gadget in OpenSocial.

Possibilities with OpenSocial

OpenSocial offers a standard set of “API’s” which allow you to communicate with the social data on Hyves. With these API’s it’s possible to, for example, know who’s viewing the gadget (the Viewer) and display his or her social data within the gadget. Using one of the standard OpenSocial “API’s” it’s possible to, for example, allow the visitor of your profile to play a game and save his high score in your database or on a tiny little data-space within OpenSocial.

Next to this it’s also possible to make the distinction between the Owner of the gadget (the Hyves who installed the gadget on his profile) and the Viewer of the gadget. This makes it possible to show different content for the Owner and the Viewer. For example if the Owner is viewing the gadget, you can show him a button which changes the settings for the gadget while the Viewer will not see this data.

At the moment the following information is available within OpenSocial (this is for the Viewer, Owner and Friends):

• Userid
• Given name
• Family name
• Display name/Nick name (Smileys are stripped out)
• Gender
• Adress (Only city and country)
• Date of birth
• Profile url
• Thumbnail url (multiple sizes)

Hyves photo albums (media) can't be requested within OpenSocial. We will try to support this in the future.

You can find more specifications here.

Or see how to start developing here!

Or have a look at the code examples.