This isn’t so much a review but more of a pointer where you can get the most up to date information about the MySpace Application Platform. The blog contains a lot of useful information like what’s going to be changed, and what the future holds for the platform, and most importantly, the people writing the blog are not some lackeys, they are the leaders that make the platform happen. Another place to check out is the release notes — the blog refers to them occasionally, but the little details that change from release to release are contained there.

If your attention span is limited the 140 characters, the Developer Team also has a twitter feed for updates on system issues and site performance.

I picked the Los Angeles Angels Network because it’s my favorite baseball team, but the authors have created a bunch of applications for all the major sports teams, and each is branded to each team. If I were to create an application that was for sports and the MySpace platform, this is it (even though it’s obviously a port from Facebook).

The sports network applications are very rich experiences that has all the information about the team, trivia questions about the team where you are ranked with other group members, and you can talk smack about other teams. The canvas surface of the application has a summary page that drives traffic into all of the other pages of the application, and it’s very dense with content even if it is a bit overwhelming.

This is an extension of the MySpace platform because it also has commenting, essentially creating not only a group for fans to meet, but also drawing in other content they can find out about the team. It’s a mini-portal, done right.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 4
• Usability: 5
• Fun Factor: 4
• Stability: 5
• Monetization Opportunities: 5

I’m taking a break from reviewing them this week because I want to offer a few tips that hopefully someone will take note of. Most of the MySpace applications aren’t very good from an usability standpoint, and it’s usually the little things they are missing that separate a good application from a great application. Additionally, the MySpace platform is still a moving target, but the end user doesn’t have to see that.

Don’t be that Johnny Bedroom hack developer that we considered when building the MySpace developer site; think of solutions that would make your application better. This stuff isn’t rocket science — even blondes can offer great tips!

Here are a few tips that might improve the user experience.

Show a loading message when the application is loading

The MySpace platform is sometimes slow, and the end user is subjected to half-loaded pages with arrows in places where there shouldn’t be arrows for navigation. Since it’s all JavaScript, and at the beginning a loading image could be show, why not do that? All it takes is showing a layer at the beginning of the JavaScript call, and hiding that loading layer as soon as the page is built.

We’re talking three lines of code.

Please, don’t you want a better experience for your users for three lines of code?

Test your application

As I have posted previously, nothing frustrates an end user more than an application that doesn’t appear to work, because they think it’s their fault. Test, test, and test again. This is especially true with some of the Flash applications on the platform — most of them have some kind of issue that makes them break.

Consider all the edge cases and build error messages around them

What happens to your application when the connection to the platform breaks, or it returns a malformed result? There should be some code in the JavaScript that considers all error messages that could happen when interacting with the platform, and provide a solution for each one. It doesn’t have to be elegant, but it should hide that there was some kind of issue with the system.

Make the application look good

Most of the applications I’ve seen so far look like the Omaha, Nebraska Greyhound Terminal (don’t ask, I’ve never been there). Hire a designer to work with you, and make the application look better — that will encourage usage, and give legitimacy to the application as a quality product.

There are other ways to encourage the viral spread of the application without sending out bulletins

The MySpace terms of use for the application platform doesn’t allow spamming the users, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reward people for encouraging installs; some of the applications have come up with some unique ideas, like giving out bonuses if over a certain amount of friends have the application installed, or another bonus when someone installs the application from your profile through a link. There are many, many ways to make promoting your application fun without breaking the rules.

Want to keep track of your favorite bands? My Local Events by Eventful goes through your friends’ list and finds events from them to show when they are coming to your town. You can also request that your favorite bands play in your neighborhood. They also have a very efficient search engine to find bands to you can add to your top bands list.

The issue with applications like this is that they require a critical mass of listings to make them useful. The application itself is well thought out and useful, but there aren’t enough listings to drive significant traffic yet. Plus the application is a bit thin in the functionality space (it would be nice if there were more links to photos and music) to make it a more complete application.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 3
• Usability: 4
• Fun Factor: 3
• Stability: 5
• Monetization Opportunities: 5

For the artist in you, you can create your own Stick Figure Family. It’s sort of like of a family tree that you can have. It’s cute, it’s fairly easy to use but I’m going to knock off a point because buttons should be used instead of hyperlinks in some places, but that’s not the only thing going on.

Most importantly, they have figured out like some of the other applications that they should be cross promoting across the multiple social networking sites. There are four other sites like FaceBook they are promoting this application on. The reason it’s called Open Social is that it’s an open platform. Sure, there’s some customization that goes on, but not that much, so we should be seeing more of this.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 2
• Usability: 2
• Fun Factor: 4
• Stability: 5
• Monetization Opportunities: 3

Mini Golf is exactly as it sounds — a miniature golf course played through a Adobe Flash application right there on MySpace. It sounds like a nifty idea, but there have been a fare number of Flash applications that have done the same thing, some of them better with a high quality, and this one asks you to buy the gold version the page.

It’s fun, but tough. The one usability issue I have is there is no way to preview the complete hole (move the cursor around) to see where you have to shoot.

The other issue: it’s a social networking site. You would think a ranking system would be in place, versus your friends and everyone on MySpace. But alas, it’s a one player game, essentially.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 2
• Usability: 2
• Fun Factor: 4
• Stability: 5
• Monetization Opportunities: 4

Virtual Cat is a take off on Pokey. It really could be titled “when good apps go bad”. It has a slight cute factor, but doesn’t have as many hot spots or actions seemingly that Pokey has, and it’s kind of a one trick cat. It would be more fun if there were some playtoys or something to give to the cat like Pokey has.

The advantage, though, is that it’s not nearly the download that Pokey was, so it shows up quicker. And this developer added advertising, so at least someone’s getting it.

On the other hand, it acts just like real cats — it doesn’t do much!

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 1
• Usability: 3
• Fun Factor: 4
• Stability:5
• Monetization Opportunities: 5

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Another application trying to turn your MySpace page into one-stop shopping spot, Free Stuff Times draws from items that are listed on it’s blog about free stuff on the internet. It seems like of a great way to shill content from advertisers, and some of the items smack of Amway promotions.

It’s not a particularly good implementation of a great idea, but it shows how you can use MySpace as a decent advertising platform.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 4
• Usability: 2
• Fun Factor: 1
• Stability: 5
• Monetization Opportunities: 5

The real goal of MySpace opening up their site to external applications is so developers will extend the profiles and give the end users more functionality to view their MySpace content. Flash Photo Viewer is a good example at an attempt to extend the functionality.

Flash Photo Viewer is exactly what it’s titled: an application built in Flash that loads on your photos on your home page, profile and canvas so you can view all your photos in a scrollable list, and see a larger version of a photo in the primary window. Click on that photo, and a new window displays the full version of the photo. While you view the profile or home page, the viewer goes into slideshow mode.

The application isn’t very complex, but it doesn’t have to be — it does exactly what it advertises.

The application design has a few issues though. It looks the the developer didn’t build separate Flash applications for the User Home Page, User Profile and Canvas, so the size of the slideshow controls is painfully small on the profile and home page. Additionally, the interface is clunky, not polished.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 4
• Usability: 3
• Fun Factor: 4
• Stability: 4
• Monetization Opportunities: 3

Leavin’ on a jet plane? I was cruising through the applications, and found one from Trip Advisor called Local Picks (note to Trip Advisor: how about a better, more interesting name, yo). Trip Advisor is the tame version of Yelp!, and orientated around travel. Need to find a hotel? It’s there. Need to find a restaurants with a lot of reviews? It’s probably there.

That’s the cool thing about this application — it’s using already available information from it’s review database to present users with a great guide just like it’s website. I even found my favorite restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia (of course, it got a great review)!

I’m sure this is a direct ripoff from their Facebook application, but it would interesting if they tailored their application more towards the MySpace crowd; this application is a bit too adultish, and it would probably be well-served by adding a few categories, like most bizarre restaurant or most hip restaurant. It’s not very fun right now.

If they ever can get users to adopt the application, there are a ton of monetization opportunities, considering their advertising base — it currently has less than 1,000 installs. It’s probably not hip enough for MySpace, and Yelp! might do better.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

• Usefulness: 4
• Usability: 5
• Fun Factor: 3
• Stability: 2
• Monetization Opportunities: 5