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NOTE: This article is a re-post of a guest article by Anil Dharni, VP of Products at hi5 and member of the OpenSocial Foundation Board of Directors, that first appeared on the OpenSocial blog.
Ever since launching our OpenSocial platform in March 2008, developers have been eager for a unified payment platform for collecting micro-transactions on hi5. Over the past year, we have moved ahead to make such a virtual currency platform available to developers while ensuring a positive user experience for our members. Over the last few weeks, hi5 has been launching our first third-party games integrated via OpenSocial-compliant APIs to our virtual currency platform - providing a standard payment method for developers to monetize their applications through our audience of over 60 million active users around the world.
The first step in this progression was the launch of our virtual currency back in December 2008, which allowed users to buy hi5 Coins and use them to purchase virtual goods on the site. This platform was initially accessible only for hi5 premium features like Gifts. We rapidly expanded the ways that users could get real currency into the system - going beyond credit/debit cards to include payment methods, such as mobile SMS, offers and alternate cards, like Ultimate Game cards, that are popular in different parts of the world.
The next step was to make our payments interface OpenSocial compliant. In order to make our virtual currency more universal across hi5 and non-hi5 applications, our OpenSocial platform team collaborated with other containers to propose an OpenSocial Virtual Currency API as an extension to the OpenSocial specification. Our virtual currency interface was expedited due to the work started by other OpenSocial containers like Xiaonei.com, 51.com, and Netlog.com. With real use cases from Asia, Europe and Latin America, the containers quickly converged on the API specifications.
The hi5 OpenSocial Virtual Currency interface is already live in public beta with several third-party developers like RockYou (RockYou Pets), Playdom (Poker Palace) and Small Worlds, enabling them to collect direct user payments within their games. We have a number of additional partnerships that will launch soon. OpenSocial developers can now leverage a standard virtual currency spec across containers - allowing them to monetize through micro-transactions without worrying about the details of payment processing, currency conversions, localized payment methods or other logistical challenges. Our users benefit, as well, with more outlets for spending their hi5 Coins and a simplified and familiar process for making payments on the hi5 site. We look forward to continuing to work with the OpenSocial community to innovate on the virtual currency standard and to make micro-transactions between users and developers a viable and growing revenue stream.
Ever since launching our OpenSocial platform in March 2008, developers have been eager for a unified payment platform for collecting micro-transactions on hi5. Over the past year, we have moved ahead to make such a virtual currency platform available to developers while ensuring a positive user experience for our members. Over the last few weeks, hi5 has been launching our first third-party games integrated via OpenSocial-compliant APIs to our virtual currency platform - providing a standard payment method for developers to monetize their applications through our audience of over 60 million active users around the world.
The first step in this progression was the launch of our virtual currency back in December 2008, which allowed users to buy hi5 Coins and use them to purchase virtual goods on the site. This platform was initially accessible only for hi5 premium features like Gifts. We rapidly expanded the ways that users could get real currency into the system - going beyond credit/debit cards to include payment methods, such as mobile SMS, offers and alternate cards, like Ultimate Game cards, that are popular in different parts of the world.
The next step was to make our payments interface OpenSocial compliant. In order to make our virtual currency more universal across hi5 and non-hi5 applications, our OpenSocial platform team collaborated with other containers to propose an OpenSocial Virtual Currency API as an extension to the OpenSocial specification. Our virtual currency interface was expedited due to the work started by other OpenSocial containers like Xiaonei.com, 51.com, and Netlog.com. With real use cases from Asia, Europe and Latin America, the containers quickly converged on the API specifications.
The hi5 OpenSocial Virtual Currency interface is already live in public beta with several third-party developers like RockYou (RockYou Pets), Playdom (Poker Palace) and Small Worlds, enabling them to collect direct user payments within their games. We have a number of additional partnerships that will launch soon. OpenSocial developers can now leverage a standard virtual currency spec across containers - allowing them to monetize through micro-transactions without worrying about the details of payment processing, currency conversions, localized payment methods or other logistical challenges. Our users benefit, as well, with more outlets for spending their hi5 Coins and a simplified and familiar process for making payments on the hi5 site. We look forward to continuing to work with the OpenSocial community to innovate on the virtual currency standard and to make micro-transactions between users and developers a viable and growing revenue stream.
We're pleased to announce the hi5 Developer Center. This site is an essential resource for people developing applications that use the hi5 Platform. Here you will find:
- The latest news about hi5 application development.
- Our latest Platform Roadmap.
- Full API documentation for the hi5 Platform.
- Our Platform Developer discussion group.
- Code Samples, Tips and more...
As you know by now, Hi5 supports widgets from Slide and Rock You. To accomplish this integration we wrote a completely new software platform. The end result is http://api.hi5.com/. The software that makes it possible is called Enunciate.
Enunciate is an open-source toolkit that generates a complete interoperable system for providing Web Services. It does this by allowing you to place metadata and documentation about your desired services directly in your code. Invoking the enunciate compiler generates a complete web site with documentation, server endpoints, and client libraries.
We're using the following features now:
We welcome you to participate in the future of Hi5 API development. You can join our new Hi5 API group where you can ask questions and keep abreast of the latest news.
Enunciate is an open-source toolkit that generates a complete interoperable system for providing Web Services. It does this by allowing you to place metadata and documentation about your desired services directly in your code. Invoking the enunciate compiler generates a complete web site with documentation, server endpoints, and client libraries.We're using the following features now:
- REST endpoints for Widgets, Feeds, and Authentication.
- SOAP support, including generated SOAP client libraries.
- JSON output support.
- Full documentation coming direct from the code.
We welcome you to participate in the future of Hi5 API development. You can join our new Hi5 API group where you can ask questions and keep abreast of the latest news.
Another LinuxWorld conference has come and gone. Many people from Hi5
attended, which just goes to show how important Linux and other Open
Source products are for our business.
Hi5's success is based in large part on these high quality open source products. Our entire site runs using open source software on a Linux platform. We've found that this provides us with unparalleled flexibility, performance and low costs.
To make Hi5 run we use all of the following products:
It's all very exciting! If working with open source projects is your thing then you should definitely check out our careers page. We'll be talking more about our open source contributions in the months to come, so stay tuned to our blog.
Paul
Update: Lou tells me that we have a few more obscure software components that we enjoy using:
Hi5's success is based in large part on these high quality open source products. Our entire site runs using open source software on a Linux platform. We've found that this provides us with unparalleled flexibility, performance and low costs.
To make Hi5 run we use all of the following products:
- Linux Servers running SuSE Enterprise Linux
- Apache and Lighttpd web servers
- PostgreSQL, a highly scalable database
- Squid for web acceleration
- Resin and Tomcat Java Application Servers
- Struts, our MVC platform
- iBatis - for Object Relational Mapping
- Spring - Java Application Framework
- Memcached, where we cache as much as possible.
- Lucene indexing and search engine
- Enunciate web service deployment framework
It's all very exciting! If working with open source projects is your thing then you should definitely check out our careers page. We'll be talking more about our open source contributions in the months to come, so stay tuned to our blog.
Paul
Update: Lou tells me that we have a few more obscure software components that we enjoy using:
- SiteMesh - Web Page Layout and Decoration Framework.
- StringTemplate - Simple templating engine.
- JRobin - RRDtool for Java
- ImageJ - Image Manipulation toolkit
About 30 people attended the June San Francisco Bay Area Postgres Users Group meeting on June 12th. The topic was all about how Hi5 scaled PostgreSQL on over fifty servers to become one of the top twenty web sites in the world. Paul Lindner (Architect) and Ram Gudavalli (Lead Engineer) from Hi5 covered:
- The overall architecture, Servers/Storage/Network
- PostgreSQL scaling and partitioning, table partitioning
- Profiling methodology
- Use of tools such as Slony, iBatis, memcached and more.
A lively pizza-fueled discussion continued well after the talk. Thanks to all those that came to visit -- we're sure to do more of these events.
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