MySpace To Open Platform
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | October 18, 2007 | Share This
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MySpace yesterday announced it will open up its platform for third-party application development, a la Facebook. What’s interesting is Saul Hansell’s argument that MySpace is already open and the social network should instead focus on “internal not external developers”:
MySpace has been remarkably stagnant in a fast-changing space, slow to add features and fix some of its odd bugs. The company appears to have put more energy into building MySpaceTV, but that is more a brand extension meant to compete with YouTube than a significant enhancement of the MySpace experience. (To be fair, MySpace’s user base continues to grow rapidly.)
The upshot: If the platform is the only thing to change at MySpace, the site will look much the same as it does now, and it may be increasingly vulnerable to defections of users.
I agree with Hansell; Reuters also notes that MySpace already lets users embed application-like features on its site, but as Hansell points out, growth on MySpace doesn’t appear to be impeded by its busy layout. What might give MySpace an edge now is that CEO Chris DeWolfe says the MySpace platform will better allow developers to monetize (again, this is from the Reuters article cited above):
For four years MySpace has allowed users to embed features from other Web sites by pasting bits of code on their MySpace pages. But Facebook’s open call to developers has already attracted 6,000 independent applications to its site…
[MySpace CEO Chris] DeWolfe said he was seeking to create a far more lucrative environment for outside developers on MySpace than currently exists on Facebook, where so far advertising opportunities for independent application developers are limited.
Mark Zuckerberg yesterday remarked that optimizing revenue is not top priority at Facebook, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the handful of developers that made money from their work did so when their apps were acquired. Google is cleverly reaching out to developers on that network so they can monetize via AdSense. It’ll be interesting to see if the promise of a “far more lucractive environment” on MySpace will shift developer attention there in the future, and if this means a better MySpace in the future, or just an even more crowded, noisy one.
Topics: Social Media, Technology |