>> SZIVOS: Sure. My name is Mike Szivos. I work for Electronic Arts. So we have a successful
app on other social networks, and we see social networks as a reach medium right now. So the
choice to go to open social is to basically reach more users than the ones we currently
reach and just to, to make sure, to get our application in the hands of as many people
as we possibly can. >> Which features of open social appeals to
the most users? >> SZIVOS: A couple of features that we found
really useful are signing through the make request method that allows us to validate
request without knowing which container they came from. When they're signed, we know that
they come from a valid container, so that saves us a lot of time. It's just all the,
the social features that allow for viral spread of an application 'cause that's kind of how--that's
our business is, is based on viral spread of our apps through people enjoying them and
then sending them to their friends. >> So what language or technology do use in...
>> SZIVOS: So primarily the backend, we use Java. And on the front end we use exclusively
Flash, Flash 10. We do--we develop very feature rich gaming applications. So Flash allows
us to do, you know, a lot of animation and cool features that would be harder to do into
this in a web technology. >> And what features are missing...?
>> SZIVOS: So far, we haven't really felt anything is missing. We have everything we
need to make success--make our game success through open social. We--we would recommend
that you guys continue to do really solid documentation and a sample code is really,
really key for us. And one other feature that I think we would--we would be able to--we
would find very useful is additional debugging information especially through make request
when we have--when we're using signing so that we know whatever we're sending is getting
to our server. >> And do you have [INDISTINCT] in the counter...?
>> SZIVOS: Just learning the iGoogle platform and dealing with the developer--development
environment which was, you know, it's not released yet. I don't know if it's in beta
or prebeta, but sometimes that would not be too stable. So that would impact our development
efforts. But beyond that, it's been--it's been great to work with.
>> And how do you measure the user retention? >> SZIVOS: So we--we decided that a user is
retained if they comeback to play a game within 30 days. So monthly active users is how we,
kind of how we gauge the success of our app. >> And how do you spend most of the [INDISTINCT]...?
>> SZIVOS: So we have a, you know, we have a really strong commitment to quality at EA.
So the products we ship have to be, you know, really polished. So we're--we spend a lot
of our time on debugging and really polishing them so that our--our users when we launch
get like the best experience and that's an experience that they then want to share with
their friends around the Internet. So primarily, it's, it's debugging and polishing before
launch 'cause we want to--we want to launch, launch strong. And we also--we're doing--we
spend a lot of time on scaling the backend too because we want it to be, you know, really
high up time and we want it to be responsive and snappy. So that's a major focus for us
>> Okay. What are the stories you would like to share and with the difficulties...
>> SZIVOS: Yeah, you know, having a very successful application can be stressful because you have
hundreds of thousands of people a month come to play it. So really have to--you have to
have confidence that the thing will scale easily or you'll end up being a victim of
your success which is kind of a nice position to be in, but also can be challenging for
the whole team. >> Okay. Well, thanks for you time.
>> SZIVOS: And thanks for the free phone.