MySpace to Make Space for Outsiders’ Widgets

Taking a lead from smaller social-networking rival Facebook, MySpace will open its application platform to third-party software developers next week, enabling outsiders to build everything from useful apps to quirky games that MySpace users can plug into their profile pages easily.

The MySpace Developers Program, which launches on Feb. 5, will build on the OpenSocial standards being promoted by Google as a platform for writing applications that can hook into a wide range of Web sites.

Right now programmers don’t have an open-architecture platform on which to write applications for a swath of Internet sites or communities. For example, applications that run in Facebook can’t automatically be applied to MySpace.

In May 2007, Facebook opened its application programming interface to third-party developers and the result has been a large inrush of outside games and widgets, bite-sized applications that perform a few simple tasks such as sharing photos or publicizing the upcoming schedule for a favorite band or ball club. These programs can be easily shared with other Facebook users and can also carry brand messages, opening up new advertising possibilities inside the social network.

Facebook has won praise from software makers, marketers and many of its 63 million global users for opening the door to these non-homegrown applications. To date, some 15,000 of them have been developed.

News Corp.-owned MySpace has more members than Facebook—around 200 million worldwide—and also has a longer history with third-party applications. But it has also implemented policies that blocked third-party tools and widgets, including those from popular sites such as music site Imeem and video aggregator Revver.com, for overtly “engaging in commercial activity.”

That obstruction began to come down in October 2007, when MySpace announced that it would join the OpenSocial program promoted by Google. Other popular social networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Google-owned Orkut are also OpenSocial partners.

Details of the MySpace Developers program are being withheld until next we3ek’s official launch, but developers are already being permitted to sign up. It’s expected that developers accepted into the program will be given some amount of access to information contained in user profiles that will help them target their applications.

Reports also quote MySpace sources as saying the network will incorporate some lessons from Facebook’s widget experience.

Some of those experiences have been difficult. Facebook recently blocked a very popular word-game widget that some observers have said infringes on the Scrabble trademark.

One problem MySpace users may encounter is a rising level of clutter as they download widgets and applications to their profile pages. Those pages are already more densely populated with ads than those of its social-network rival. But in January, Facebook dealt with a rising tide of member complaints about clutter by announcing a new cleanup tool that will push old or unused widgets off the front profile page and into a background file, the same way users periodically clean old icons off their computer desktops.

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