There’s one more thing to tell you on Mixi[J].
Mixi upgraded the interface that has been introduced for two years to those who have partnered, and introduced two APIs – “mixi Plugin[J]” and “mixi Graph APIs[J]” on Friday. mixi Graph APIs are designed for the third parties to integrate their social web services and apps with Mixi. mixi Plugin is a set of HTML codes that allows you to integrate your website with Mixi.
mixi Graph APIs consist of:
- People API – Allows to get a list of someone’s Mixi friends.
- Groups API – Allows to get a list of “Group” which is a classification that someone have sort out his/her Mixi friends.
- People lookup API – Allows to retrieve a profile of someone’s Mixi friend by his/her e-mail address.
- Voice API – Allows to integrate your app with Mixi Voice (Mixi’s Twitter-like service)
- Updates API – Allows to get someone’s feed telling his/her Mixi friend’s activity updates.
These APIs are open only to those who have completed the partner registration at this time, but expected to be available for anyone. Mixi Check API, that enables to integrate your website with Mixi and share it with your Mixi friends – a feature like Facebook’s “Share” and Digg, was introduced last Monday, which is available for the partners so far but expected to be completely open to all in the near future.
mixi Plugin consist of:
- mixi Check button – Same as “Share” button on Facebook.
- Simple Post – Allows to post a comment on your website to Mixi Diary or Mixi Calendar.
Anyone is allowed to use mixi Plugin on his/her blog or website if a check key is obtained. 50 major web services from 30 companies including Rakuten, Yahoo Japan[J], DeNA(Mobage-Town), Hatena[J], EC Navi[J] and Kakaku.com[J] have completed the integration of mixi Plugin or mixi Graph API. DeNA allows their social network users to post a link of Mobage’s games and novels to Mixi. DeNA’s COO Isao Moriyasu says, “Mixi and DeNA are working on a jointly launch of new social web services.” Mixi and Mobage are always considered as competitors, but he pointed out, “Mixi just wants to take the top of the real social graph and we(DeNA) are focusing on developing the social game platform. The two companies want different layers of users, and our partnership will never cause a conflict of interests.”
Mixi expects to partner with hardware manufacturers and develop digital appliances and electronic devices which can be connected to the service’s social graph. Panasonic is developing a DVD recorder that allows you to let your friends know what TV programs you’ve reserved to record via Mixi.
Masaru IKEDA