MySpace to Open Platform to Developers

MySpace says it plans to give developers greater access to its platform so they can build new tools and integrated services...and help MySpace keep up with Facebook.

MySpace is currently the 800-pound gorilla of the social networking world Social networking world, but the company is still trying to put the kibosh on the competition. Speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe was joined my News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch as he announced MySpace plans to open its platform to enable developers to create new services and applications which tie into the MySpace service. The move is widely viewed as a way for MySpace to keep up with upstart rival Facebook, which hs seen a steady increase in popularity—and developer interest—since publishing its own API and allowing developers to build applications and widgets that tie into the service.

MySpace has historically taken a hands-off attitude towards users embedding features from other Web sites within their MySpace pages, and DeWolfe pointed out that MySpace played a key role in the early popularity of video sharing site YouTube. DeWolfe said that MySpace is aiming to create a developer program which is more lucrative to developers than Facebook’s offerings, enabling independent applications to tightly integrate their applications into MySpace and tap advertising revenue generated from pages hosting new services.

Few doubt the demand for applications and services integrated with social networking Web sites is there: so far, Facebook’s developer program has generated more than 6,000 independent applications. MySpace currently boasts about 110 million users, but Facebook membership has shot to almost 50 million members in the last few months.