MySpace Platform To Launch Next Week

MySpace
is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of
third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product.
While this has been rumored since June,
this is the first indication that the service is preparing to actually
launch. And we also have information that suggests that it will be
announced next week at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

The new developer platform, like Facebook Platform
which was announced in May, will essentially be a set of APIs and a new
markup language that will allow third party developers to create
applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to
include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their
applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile
information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Applications will
need to be hosted on MySpace servers.

And in a big change in strategy for MySpace, developers will be able
to serve their own advertising within their applications, and keep 100%
of the revenue (Facebook also allows this).

Suddenly Facebook, with nearly 5,500 third party applications, has
significant competition around their platform - Within a month both
MySpace and Google (see our post here)
will probably have launched their own services. Platform competition is
great for developers, but it also means they need to create and
maintain separate code for each platform they choose to play on.
Someone is hopefully working on a startup that will streamline that
process for people. Whoever does it first, and best, can have a winner
on their hands.

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