After months of rumblings and announcements, MySpace is finally getting ready to pull the trigger on its long-awaited platform for developers. Starting today, programmers can sign up to register for the MySpace API program, which will go live on February 5th. The APIs will allow developers to create social applications for MySpace much like they can already for Facebook. The platform will be compatible with Google’s OpenSocial platform, meaning that applications written for OpenSocial will work on MySpace with a few minimal tweaks.
More details will come out later about what exactly the APIs will allow developers to do, but at a high level they will allow for deeper integration into MySpace than can currently be done with Flash widgets. The APIs we believe will support Flash, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets, and give developers deeper access to MySpace member profile information and their connections. Developers also will be able to make money from advertising associated with their applications.
MySpace has a lot of catching up to do with Facebook in terms of building a loyal community of developers. For one thing, Facebook is far ahead technology-wise, with nearly 15,000 apps written for the site. But competition is always welcome. One way for MySpace to attract developers would be to offer better economic incentives. Amit Kapur, who is MySpace’s newly-appointed COO (reported first here a week ago), tells me he is most excited about helping developers make money:
Yeah, I think ultimately that may be an area where we are able to differentiate. If you look at the past, companies like Photobucket and YouTube did contribute to the success of MySpace. They were continuing to build on the user experience in ways we were not focused on. Philosophically, we want to make that easier for companies.
As we find out more details about how the economics will shake out, we’ll keep you posted. Kapur also mentioned that the three big areas MySpace is focusing on right now are: making the Web more personal, more portable (through both mobile and data portability), and more collaborative. It is a fair bet that social apps that focus on those areas are likely to receive more attention from MySpace.
This is HUGE. I’ve been waiting for this announcement for a long time now.
>>Amit Kapur… tells me he is most excited about helping developers make money
right on target. nice move Amit!
(and congrats on the promotion
guessing Facebook will be watching the story on Platform Monetization closely.
double-psyched we already had Amit lined up as a keynote speaker at Graphing Social Patterns, March 3-4 in San Diego (plug)
http://conferen...lly.com/gspwest
>>Amit Kapur… tells me he is most excited about helping developers make money
right on target. nice move Amit!
(and congrats on the promotion
guessing Facebook will be watching the story on Platform Monetization closely.
double-psyched we already had Amit lined up as a keynote speaker at Graphing Social Patterns, March 3-4 in San Diego (plug)
http://conferen...lly.com/gspwest
Signing up now.
This should have happened months ago.
When the competition leads with an innovative idea that gets noticed – others follow
How can a My Space make the “Web” more mobile and personal ?
Maybe with their knowledge of how to trap users in a bad UI ?
Oh….a Rupert Murdoch company helping developers make money…Some how I dont think so…..The internet is the platform, and if REST and other already open standards were used more frequently we would not need Facebook or Myspace to open up….but then they could not lock developers into using their proprietary coding schemes….When is the next fbhtml standards committee meeting ?
This is more important for Google’s Open Social, then for Myspace…
I really don’t see anything to get excited about here. As mentioned above, developers have always been able to embed things like games and music into Myspace via Flash.
Beyond that a platform is only valuable if it can provide relevant social information. But most people’s Myspace social graph is so corrupted at this point that it’s essentially useless. I mean, how many people do you know who have 100+ Myspace friends and don’t know the great majority of them? Or people who just add anyone? Half of why Facebook’s info is so valuable is because they go out of their way to make sure every account is an actual person and not just a fake identity. Myspace doesn’t do that.
Beyond that I suppose Myspace can offer personal info (favorite movie, tv show, etc…) but that data could easily be gotten through a crawler now so other than a little convenience nothing’s been accomplished there.
Then you have Facebook’s biggest advantage which is the newsfeed but Myspace doesn’t have an equivalent to that so they have nothing to offer there.
So beyond the laughable claims that they are going to somehow help developers monetize their applications (myspace can’t even monetize itself at this point) I don’t see anything terribly exciting here.
this is good. myspace wil definitely increase their stranglehold of the social networking spce.
john
dishonestrealtor.com
So why is it good that anyone company stranglehold of the social networking space….I think we know what kind of wonderful things can happen for users when one company has a stranglehold on anything.
Oh…Can any of the users of myspace export their fof info ?
Do any of you receive a penny of the ad revenue that your content generates?
I dont understand the My Space love…..
Beautiful! FaceySpacey.com is taking orders in 2008. Having built flash widget generation systems and Facebook apps for top Athletes, we can handle all your Open Social and Myspace widget needs. We already have several major Open Social apps built. Give us a shout.
James
from
FaceySpacey.com, Your One Stop Social Media Shop
MySpace opening its platform for developers is definitely a move in the right direction. It just goes on to prove the long held belief that the only way to make sure that your users come back to you is not to force them to do so.
However I am a little skeptical right now because of myspace’s history of closing down a large number of useful 3rd party applications in the past. Let us see if they have really changed.
Am signing up right now, to try and see if we can integrate the data from facebook and myspace somehow.
That’s what I was waiting for.
I’m going to start creating my apps for myspace so users on Givemebeats.com can promote their beats easily
http://www.givemebeats.com
After facebook released a Javascrip/JSON Api…MySpace is really feeling the pressure.
http://www.jhatak.com
Blazing Fast Internet Web Meetings : Free
But I need a MySpace account in good standing to build apps.. I wonder if anybody has that
It will be good if the users can integrate the data from facebook to myspace and vice versa.
Great coverage on the news Erick
If you’re watching this space, but are having a hard time keeping up, I publish a weekly digest every Wednesday on the Social Networking Industry, be sure to check it out.
http://www.web-...ategory/digest/
It often has links to Techcrunch, news releases and additional information from briefings with these vendors.
I wouldnt be surprised if it very buggy and full of security despite being based on the opensocial api. Not to mention that myspace is completely saturated with widgets already. A little late to the party honestly…
Wonder what they will keep for themselves. Doubtful it will be open to ALL categories.
Hey all, I’ve been working with MySpace on the developer platform – so wanted to follow up a few of the comments here:
@Silicon Valley – “This should have happened months ago. When the competition leads with an innovative idea that gets noticed”. It’s true that MySpace is not the first SocNet to offer a platform, but it’s by no means the last – what are the 2nd and 3rd biggest social network platforms? There’s plenty of room for MySpace here, plus MySpace has benefited from seeing where the mistakes have been made in the existing platforms – such as the problem of spam generated by apps.
@William – the decision to support OpenSocial, to me, is a clear sign that MySpace is trying its best to avoid being proprietary. Yes, it’s some new API calls to learn, but the notion that you can use the skills learned on other social networks is v empowering to the developer. MySpace could have invented yet-another-markup-language, but didn’t. I’m not sure, therefore why you mention FBML as that is a very proprietary language.
@Tom – “I really don’t see anything to get excited about here. As mentioned above, developers have always been able to embed things like games and music into Myspace via Flash.” Well, firstly OpenSocial allows you access profile information for the profile viewer, owner and potentially their friends (depends on privacy setting, etc). Also, it’s MySpace giving you the clear green light to develop these apps and help you get them easily onto user’s profiles.
@Vagif “I wouldnt be surprised if it very buggy and full of security despite being based on the opensocial api. Not to mention that myspace is completely saturated with widgets already.” That’s a very pessimistic position! If anything, the security is one of the highest priorities for the MySpace platform dev team and I think it’s an area that’s going to be particularly strong in compared to the competition. As for MySpace being saturated with widgets, I’m unsure as to what you mean… Even more choice, combined with new functionality from the OpenSocial calls, means more choice for the user as to what she puts on her profile page – to me that has to be only but a good thing.
If people have questions or queries about the MySpace Developer Platform and OpenSocial please feel free to email me: bmetcalfe (at) myspace.com
Anyone know what language this api will be in? any chance someone can make a quick wrapper for .net c#?
Can we compare this with Facebook’s initiative “Facebook Turns 1,500 Users Into Spanish Translation Slaves” for free.
http://www.tech...slation-slaves/
Who is wise??!!
Im going to try to add that for my new site http://www.pickabeat.net for producers to sell beats.