Greetings App Developers,

Bebo is excited to announce that our new engagement tools and metrics for apps are now available to all developers on the Bebo platform!  You can find them by viewing your app in the Bebo DevApp and clicking on “View App Reports.”

Our developer tools include new, valuable engagement metrics and reporting that analyze time spent, percentage of returning users, and time spent/total installs of applications.  Bebo will use a portion of this newly available information to compute an Engagement Score for developers, based on both percentage of returning users and time spent in an application. At Bebo, we pride ourselves on our extremely engaged community and we want to help you achieve similar success.  All applications will be given a dynamic 1-10 ranking, and those that consistently hold the highest ranking will be rewarded with increased access to viral channels, visibility, and opportunities to test Beta features. The first reward will be the ability to send changes feed items to non-app users.

To underscore our commitment to engaging applications, we are also excited to announce the B.E.S.T “Bebo’s Engage to Succeed Today” Developer Challenge for new applications, with co-sponsor Sun Microsystems. Judges for Bebo’s B.E.S.T. contest are bloggers Dave McClure of 500Hats, Frank Gruber of SomewhatFrank.com, and Jesse Stay of StayNAlive. The contest is open to all new applications uploaded to Bebo beginning today. Winners will be announced at a future Bebo developer event in early 2009, and will win prizes from Sun Microsystems and on-site promotion on Bebo.  Entering is as simple as checking two boxes in your developer application or to find more information, click here.

These engagement metrics will allow you to:
1. Better understand your app users
2. Easily track activity within your application
3. Allow you to define, achieve and be rewarded for true engagement

We want you to understand exactly how we are calculating your app’s engagement score, so here’s the formula upfront: (active users/total users) x (time spent/active user).  Remember, the more engaging your app is, more potential users you’ll be able to reach!

Thanks to all of the developers that made it out to our DevNite event in Mountain View last night!  We appreciated all of the feedback we received from developers and look forward to holding more events like these in the future.

Calling All App Developers:

Got your apps on Bebo and want to find out what’s next? Haven’t developed for Bebo and want to find out how easy it is?  Get out of your office early for Bebo DevNite! 

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Hear about new features
• Speak with the Bebo Engineers
• Get details about a contest that will launch at BeboDev Nite with guest judges Dave McClure, Jesse Stay and Frank Gruber

Not to mention demos from  apps, Sun Microsystems, Dash and some competitive Wii Rock Band. 

Space is limited, so sign up today to reserve your spot.

We’re also looking for some top-notch developers to demo their apps at DevNite.  If you’re interested, please send an email to developers-help@beboinc.com.

App Developers,

Over the past few weeks, we know that Application Platform downtime has been an issue and it’s one we take very seriously. We realize it affects you and our users and we’re committed to ensuring a consistent and positive experience.  This is our top priority right now and we are working diligently to fix any issues expeditiously.  We are excited about the increase in engagement that you’ve helped to drive and we look forward to continued growth.

We should have an update for you on this issue by EOD today, so please check back here.  Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate all you’ve done.

Update 4:59PST: Our Bebo Apps engineers are working hard on a Friday night to get a release out that solves our downtime issues.  Rest assured that the App Platform will be functioning over the weekend.  We expect the release to go out by approximately 9pm PST tonight.

Thank you,
The Apps Team

Updated: 24th Oct 2008, 19:24 GMT

The apps platfrom is back online now and has been looking healthy for the last 12 hours. We are doing our best to ensure that when outages like these occur, issues are resolved as soon as possible.

As the Bebo Platform continues to grow we want to ensure that our users have the best and safest experience possible when engaging with your applications. In order to maintain the success of the Bebo Platform, we are publishing the Bebo Platform Policies and Guidelines for Developers. These Guidelines will help you create your application to provide an engaging and safe experience for our users.

By September 4, 2008 all applications on the Bebo Platform must comply with these Guidelines. Please review the Guidelines and make any necessary modifications to your applications before September 4, 2008. Failure to comply with these Guidelines after September 4, 2008 may result in any of the actions outlined in the “Possible Actions” section of the Guidelines.

Please note that this document is complimentary to our Developer TOS and should not be read in isolation or as a substitute to our Developer TOS. Also, since we our constantly talking to developers and users and listening to their ideas for improvement, it is likely that we will add to these Guidelines in the future.

If you have questions please send them to developers-help@beboinc.com. And don’t forget to check back soon for additional updates.

It’s been a little while since our last announcement but we’ve been hard at work on bringing you the features you need to develop and grow engaging applications. In the near future we will be announcing some really cool features but for now we have a little treat for you.

What’s new? We’re rolling out a new SNML tag called sn:comment-form. This allows you to embed a specialized multi-friend-selection form into your application allowing your users to send comments to their friends. More importantly, each comment will have a bit of text telling the users’ friends that the comment was posted from your app and will contain a link back to your app’s profile page. Since one of Bebo’s best viral channels is the profile page itself, having multiple app links across many profiles will be extremely valuable for your app.

Have fun!

Hola Amigos

I know it’s been a long time since  I rapped at ya, but I’ve been busier than a squirrel before winter. “What’s the deal?” you ask. Well, we’ve just rolled out brand new external auth apis, as well as support for them in our java and PHP libraries.

Now, you’ll be able to use Bebo’s platform in external web apps  *and* desktop apps. I can’t wait to see the bulk photo uploaders. We’ve also created documentation for all of this stuff, which you’ll find here. Heck, we’ve gone a step further, and re-done a large portion of our docs. Feel free to give them a look too.

Happy coding.

Porting your Facebook app to Bebo is quick and easy. Blake Commagere, our current Featured Developer has written a step-by-step guide on how simple it is to port your Facebook app to Bebo. It only took Blake about 9 hours total to port over his apps, which include Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, and Slayers. So what are you waiting for? Check it out and start porting now!

And, if you live in the Bay Area, Blake will be presenting at the Bay Area Facebook Meetup on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at the AOL offices in Mountain View. Joining Blake on the panel will be Bebo’s Head of Platform Engineering, Steve Cohen. Learn more

We’ve noticed a significant drop-off in users during the add flow, and we’re going to say it’s due to the terrifyingly grey and checkbox adorned add page. Well, we’ve re-done the page, incorporating the skins you use on your profile pages, providing your application’s logo and description as well as the profile photos of all of your friends who have added your app.

We’re hoping that the friendlier design will increase the number of users who add the apps. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves for this page though.

Stay tuned!