January 18, 2007

MySpace is Getting a Little Testy

Michael Arrington

57 comments »

There was a mysterious outage on MySpace this morning. It lasted just 2.5 hours, and the site itself performed mostly as it should. All that happened was this: Anyone trying to add a Flash widget to the site, or show an image via an inserted link, or otherwise embed any sort of code, couldn’t do it. Existing widgets worked fine, but none could be added. And if a MySpace user edited their page, any existing embedded code produced an error.

So far, MySpace hasn’t returned our request for a comment on exactly why this happened. But executives at some of the countless startups that are building their businesses on the back of MySpace, now the largest Internet site, in the hope of a YouTube-like success sure are talking. All off the record, of course. A common comment is “I don’t want MySpace to single us out.”

What they’re saying is that MySpace just made its first move in an upcoming big stakes game of “chicken,” and that a senior exec there is making a career-defining bet that everyone else will blink first. MySpace is still prickly over the YouTube acquisition (they wanted it), and rumors are that they weren’t happy that PhotoBucket didn’t ping them about an acquisition before taking their last round of financing, either. Perhaps the recent $20 million Slide funding was one straw too many. All of these companies rely heavily (understatement) on getting their content onto MySpace user pages.

People have been predicting this for some time, but until now MySpace hasn’t taken any drastic steps to cut these services off. Today may have been a test to see how easily they could cut these widgets out, and to see how people would react. Or, it could have just been a bug.

If MySpace does start to permanently ban widgets and other embedded code, they’ll almost certainly say it is for security reasons. But they’ll continue to push their own competing services, and allow only “certified” partners back in. And my bet is that the certification process may have a fee involved.

Update: MySpace is now unofficially telling affected companies that this was a “developer error” and not intentional.

Sphere It

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Comments

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First Guy

January 18th, 2007 at 5:49 pm

Forget MySpace! Bebo and Tagged are way better!
Sean

January 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm

Damn I hate MySpace.
joey

January 18th, 2007 at 6:11 pm

one word: Vox
Jonathan Jiang

January 18th, 2007 at 6:19 pm

*COUGH* DOT [stutter] NET *COUGH*
Herpes Fairy

January 18th, 2007 at 6:21 pm

If MySpace banned Flash widgets permanently, users would drop like crazy, and then Mashable would cease to exist.
Amy Wilsch

January 18th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

If a company puts itself at the mercy of another company for its main/sole revenue model, it seems prudent to build into the long term plan a parachute for when they get screwed some day. They all do one way or another (or acquired).
Fashion Industry Ceo

January 18th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

I might try bebo or tag for once!
Nathan Friedly

January 18th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

Knowing myspace, it was probably just a bug. that site has shityer reliability than windows.

But I think you’re perfectly right that they might block it in the future and then charge ‘certified providers’. And I’m going to take it a step further and suggest that they won’t delete any existing embedded stuff even though it is a ’security risk.’ Deleting existing content will run off current users far quicker than blocking new stuff.
The Rqtect

January 18th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

very good post mike
Will

January 18th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

Wow Michael, I know why that happened and you’re way off. Unfortuantely, I’m not allowed to explain in detail.
Michael Fomkin

January 18th, 2007 at 6:46 pm

It really will be interesting to see some of the Beta 2.0 Ideas that are not dependent on Myspace and concepts that utilize a more traditional outside sales force to bring in traffic along with online traffic
Michael Arrington

January 18th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

Will - Since you work at MySpace, I can only assume you do know why it happened…and perhaps your PR people should make a statement.
lemon obrien

January 18th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

This is why a $20 million investment in a widget company is called “stupid.”
cooper

January 18th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

Friendster?
Michael Arrington

January 18th, 2007 at 7:30 pm

lemon - yeah, I blinked at that, too.
Paul

January 18th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

MySpace dropping widgets will not cause users to drop like flies. That’s a ridiculous statement. The truth is, users don’t give a damn about that stuff. Not the MySpace audience, anyhow. We’re talking about millions of ordinary people, who just want to achieve the animations and effects they desire, for their profiles.

They don’t give a damn where the animation, or widget was produced. MySpace could drop support for embedded media, and put in their own products and the community would not bat an eyelid. And they will, and they should - that’s business.
dumbfounder

January 18th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

This isn’t the first time. I have experienced problems with embeds in the past that have gone away after a period of time. I think this is just the first to receive a lot of attention. They have a tough job of making sure their users can do what they want (sort of) without embedding malicious javascript and whatnot while still allowing embeds like youtube and slide.
ventureblogalist

January 18th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

hmm. getting interesting. I take more insight from comments the CEO said a few months back.
ventureblogalist

January 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm

btw, my IP address seems to be blocked from making comments –

69.139.19.138
Paul Freet

January 18th, 2007 at 8:45 pm

I’ve got a suggestion to all the Slides of the world - a) get a real business model, b) cut a deal with that whale your planting your barnacles on, or c) make sure to have really excellent parties with all those VC dollars.
Don Wilson

January 18th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

Of course it was a dev error, it’s no big deal. I remember one short while where none of the user-made layouts worked at all and most of my friends (people who own myspace resource sites) were nearly shitting themselves.
Drama 2.0

January 18th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Agree with all of the comments about how stupid it is to build a “business” that is completely dependent upon another company. Of course, many businesses are dependent upon other companies, but in this case MySpace can shut somebody like Slide off almost instantly with little effort. It would be funny if somebody at MySpace “accidentally” shut them off for a few hours. Imagine the phone calls between the VCs that put up $20 million. They’d have lost that money faster than an addict with a coke habit.

Investments in “widget” companies are fairly dumb in my opinion because there’s a lack of a business model, but Slide takes the cake because of the amount that has been raised. The only reason I think they’ve raised that much is because Max Levchin is the founder and VCs invest primarily in people, even though intelligent people can try to build poor businesses. Max certainly doesn’t need VC money to finance his ideas and the unfortunate thing is that there’s a good chance the VCs (and the individuals and institutions that have invested in their funds) will eat the loss while Max will experience a very limited (at most) loss because his name enables him to play with other people’s money.
Jonathan Jiang

January 18th, 2007 at 9:00 pm

@19.ventureblogalist: cuz you got no a records my friend!
Josh

January 18th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

If I were Myspace I would make an announcement stating that all third party widgets will cease on a certain date until those that provide the widgets conform with a set of guidelines:

1) Pay the piper to get a license to produce widgets that can be placed on myspace

2) Ensure that these widgets meet some sort of standard of use. This is so that performance will increase and profiles will look a bit cleaner.

3) Have some sort of security standard they must meet.

Think of this as not only a pay toll, but a vehicle inspection to make sure its fit to drive on the road.

Myspace could give these companies a couple months to change until they eventually shut them out if they do not comply.

Of course, Myspace could just build these services and completely shutdown the outside services. This would take time and maybe they shoot for this in the future. However, if they take my suggestion they could build in another revenue stream almost immediately, plus increase the security and usability of their site. All +’s in my book.

The widget companies need to die, but if they are going to survive then they won’t be getting a free ride anymore (which will help them dig their own grave).
Squasher98

January 18th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

While it does blow my mind how much Slide has raised, a properly created widget has another benefit besides acquisition potential - SEM. Typically code is embedded to the parent website, generating a much greater PR. This doesn’t merit millions of dollars, but it might if someone comes up with the right approach.

Shameless promotion

http://www.LeveragingIdeas.com
Survival Shows

January 18th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

I doub’t they’d start blocking all widgets at once probably slowly fade them out…. oh and of course suggest their own to replace
Say No to Crack

January 18th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

Seems like lots of the big sites have been having problems. GMail was more or less down for ~an hour, and salesforce.com was basically down for the same period (but at a different time).

Bummer.
TrentL

January 18th, 2007 at 10:36 pm

This is actually not new, MySpace has been actively censoring several widget and video sites for several months now. In fact, MySpace’s original founder is even suing News Corp under anti-trust law due to their anti-competitive behavior. Today’s incident only further proves News Corps intentions to close MySpace from competitors as they see fit.

http://censorspace.com/?p=113
jeremy liew

January 18th, 2007 at 10:38 pm

There is a long tradition of building businesses based on distribution. It used to be that you had to do a deal with a portal to get distribution (e.g. Google’s and Travelocity’s initial deals with Y! and AOL). Companies putting widgets into Myspace and Bebo and the other social networks is the current equivalent. So far, if the users like you, no “deal” has been necessary. I’m clearly biased (since Lightspeed is an investor in Rockyou) but I think that its entirely reasonable
Marcus Kazmierczak

January 18th, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Here’s a pretty interesting article about MySpace and the technology it uses. My guess would be it is just another glitch in a long line of glitches. Scaling to 140 million people is not an easy task.

http://www.baselinemag.com/art.....923,00.asp
permanent hater

January 18th, 2007 at 10:53 pm

I guess they are still using the old database architecture for some parts of the site.

From “Inside Myspace.com” (http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2082925,00.asp):

“The next database architecture was built around the concept of vertical partitioning, with separate databases for parts of the Web site that served different functions such as the log-in screen, user profiles and blogs. Again, the Web site’s scalability problems seemed to have been solved—for a while.”

This would explain why only this specific part of MySpace was affected this morning. MySpace’s technological system, much like its actual website, is ugly. lol
permanent hater

January 18th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

@Marcus: oops, didn’t see your very last post referring to the same article
hindustan

January 18th, 2007 at 11:04 pm

Lot of big sites gmail, salesforce, myspace are having problems this days…
Mark iPod Guy

January 18th, 2007 at 11:08 pm

Free market, many other services like Bebo out there.. water seeks level ground.
phil tadros

January 18th, 2007 at 11:22 pm

since I’m online more then anyone probably should, do to the love of being online and
the huge excitement and undertaking of metroproper.com i was actually up and editing my videos just the order etc and i took some out and was thinking of putting my band of cats on ther then i decided, na.. they really play instruments’ really.. well better then any rock star band of cats I’ve ever seen.. okay fine look http://www.vimeo.com/clip:37813 .. oh yea and i experienced the whole “bug” thing for being able to knock out all the “piggy backers” which i love and are Indy start ups that organically have grown through the free for all movement of what myspace kinda sorta use to be, is myspace gonna be the AOL of social networks in the future? well time will tell, it is owned by Fox News Corp now.. so quite possibly:(:
D'Artagnan

January 19th, 2007 at 12:17 am

What a baseless premature panic-mongering work of pure drivel Good lord a knitting circle is a more accurate source of information.
Chuck Schick

January 19th, 2007 at 12:19 am

Phil, donkey.
morons

January 19th, 2007 at 12:35 am

Seriously, the comments on TC are getting increasingly bad. The ppl in the know obviously don’t comment, so there is an increased concentration of crap in here.

Slide, watch this space. It’s not a widget company. Dufuses.
phil tadros

January 19th, 2007 at 12:35 am

ha, sorry i’m ramblin nonsense circles, just felt like sharing a random blurb
Adam benayoun

January 19th, 2007 at 1:05 am

I think that we can expect from my space several more “testing” in the future.
I think that they’d want a lage share of the cake in the widget economy being the largest site.
They been testing it not only to see how easy it is to ban the widget because you dont need to do it live (unless you want it to affect the userbase which is what they tried to do) but to test their userbase.
This intentional test has been hitting the news on techcrunch and gigaOM and im sure on more sites aswell.
they can ask for a fee, they can try to ban and only allow back into their site the “certified widget”, but i think it might really hurt MySpace.
But again in long term this strategy might compensate the loss of users (which im not sure will move out, see the network effect).
Anyway, i always stated that developing third party component is a risky market, now widget creator are uncertain of their future.
And that might also scare VC from now on.

…..or that could be only a glitch which caused millions of us to be anxious about wether this was intentional or not.

Disclaimer: this is only my opinion here, i do not have any inside information.
Klaus

January 19th, 2007 at 3:25 am

>This is why a $20 million investment in a widget company is called “stupid.”

Now it makes sense - to stay in the game these widget companies need to hand over a lot of money to myspace, soon
Kula bácsi

January 19th, 2007 at 4:21 am

Parasites get what they deserve.
NetMidWest

January 19th, 2007 at 6:34 am

I don’t suppose it has anything to do with this:
http://digg.com/tech_news/MySpace_Gets_Goatse_d

Certainly makes sense for MySpace to kill hotlinking…
which may be affecting the wiget world.
josh

January 19th, 2007 at 6:43 am

sounds a bit paranoid to think they did it intentionally as a test.

although it’s funny what happens when a site becomes a “platform” and then becomes a “standard” and people start building on it. They start looking at it in a whole new way and changes to the APIs or whatnot are seen as “machiavellian diabolical plots” (roll 12 sided die to see what…or flip your eight ball… ).

even big sites who have become platforms have outages and bugs.

ebay’s behavior in this regard is different but in this case sounds like just a hiccup.
Chicago Business

January 19th, 2007 at 10:13 am

For me, errors on MySpace are common but uneventful, so I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions because of a 2.5 hour outage. About one out of every four times that I modify or add anything to my content at MySpace, I get an message reporting that there’s an error and it’s been reported to the MySpace development team (or something like that). Usually I’m able to click back and re-submit and the error message goes away… at worst, that fails so I go away and try it later, at which point it works. I always assume these errors are just growing pains, not a conspiracy.
Scott

January 19th, 2007 at 11:12 am

Myspace should have done this a long time ago. ON PURPOSE. They know how much crap gets on those pages, if they had identical products, they could get 100% of the money baby.
Ayush

January 19th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Companies like Photobucket have a lot to worry about since they’re playing second fiddle to gigantic community that can snuff them out at will.

There’s very low switching costs for photobucket users to move out en masse when Myspace comes up with competing solution and purposefully blocks (or, worse still, makes it harder for photobucket users to do what they do on Myspace) photobucket

Photobucket needs to think long and hard about how it’s adding value to their users and what they are doing to retain them independent of its position as an “image hosting company”. The partnerships with Flock and Piczo are steps in the right direction, but that’s not going to keep their free users (88-90% of their total userbase) from switching when things get hot with myspace. They need to find a way to add new services and convert more free users to paid users.
Peter

January 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

wow Michael, you’re like, so wrong, it’s not even funny. or maybe it is. ha-ha. i know exactly why this happened. ha-ha. but my owners won’t let me squeal. ha-ha.

–myspace hack–
David Mackey

January 19th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

Yeah, I’d have to say that sounds like a developer error to me.
Michael

January 21st, 2007 at 9:13 pm

I am not surprised by this . News Corp did not acquire MySpace.com for nothing . It had a genuine commercial interest in running the show . Its clear that Tom and Chris will be watching from the sidelines as News Corp executives show them how to make Money from this Monster which they have created . News Corp has given enough time for all those Widgets services to build their market riding on the long tail of MySpace . Its only a matter of time before it Plugs off external services and starts launching competing products . I think we have got to appreciate that MySpace has the right to set its own business objectives and has the right to switch of external services or keep a few channel partners based on a specific fee. What is really does for those who had been riding the MySpace wave for free is that it allows them to innovate and look for other areas among both web2.0 and web1.0 space and find niche areas which had otherwise been drowned in the shrill cry of MySpace . In short its a good development for the Internet Industry as a whole .
x-roushana-x

February 28th, 2007 at 2:56 am

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