The profile view is the publicly available profile that the user exposes to the outside world, and can be accessed by anyone the user allows. In some containers, the profile view may reveal applications that the user has added to anyone viewing his profile. Applications such as those that display gifts sent and received or provide information about the user, or wall-type applications with ping abilities, are all popular within this space because they allow interaction between an outside party and an application that the original user has installed. Figure 1-6 shows the placement of this view within the container.

Figure 1-6. The application profile view

It’s less common for containers to have this view in addition to just a standard small view (home view) and a large view (canvas view), but if available, the profile view has a great number of benefits. Unlike with the home view, the direct audience for this small view is anyone viewing the user’s profile. This audience will see your application load with some content attempting to draw them into using it. Because you are reaching out to an audience that is relevant to the user in some way, you have a real opportunity here to drive new user installations of your application. You can provide new methods by which that person can reach out to the original user beyond what would normally be available from the social container itself. Such interaction methods might be providing free gifts to the two users, helping them out in games, or comparing maps of where they have been in the world. When the new person interacts with your application to do something like this, she will be prompted to add it to her own profile, gaining you a user.

Since this view is essentially a small view that allows outside interaction, development for it usually contains the same restrictions as those for the home view. Working with all available views to provide a comprehensive user experience that allows users to interact with whatever view of the application they wish is probably the most vital thing we’ll talk about here. Users will never use your application in exactly the way that you intend, so plan accordingly and provide them with as much application depth as you can in every view.