Will Myspace's Application Platform Be a Success?
March 18, 2008 by Josh Liptzin
It's only been a few days since the official beta release of Myspace's application platform and developers have already put out over 300 applications. Topping the list are familiar Facebook favorites including Zynga's Texas Hold'em Poker, Graffiti, and iLike. RockYou is ready for the next round of comment wall wars with their release of SuperComments, and Slide wasted no time porting their popular SuperPoke and Top Friends applications (interesting play, considering the top friends list has always been a core feature of Myspace).
But the real fun begins when Myspace opens the floodgates by providing developers with access to the viral invitation and notifications channels that drove millions of application installs within the first few days of Facebook's platform launch last May. Until that happens, it seems that Myspace's platform itself will grow faster than its applications.
Will Myspace's application platform be successful? There's no question that Myspace's application platform is a little late to the game (and probably would not even exist if not for Facebook), but that will play to Myspace's advantage. Myspace can learn from Facebook's mistakes, and that's evident already with the controlled release of their platform, as opposed to Facebook's strategy, which many frustrated Facebook users perceived as one big spamathon.
Consider also that Myspace users are probably more open to applications than Facebook users were last May. Myspace always allowed its users to take creative control over their profile spaces (a feature that started out as a bug) - allowing users to flare-up their profiles in any way they wanted. This paved the way for things like widgets from Slide or embeddable videos from YouTube to spread virally through Myspace's community (sound familiar?). These widgets really were the first social applications to gain widespread popularity, so in a sense, Myspace's new application platform is nothing more than a formalization of something that for the most part, already exists.
Myspace is in an excellent position to take control of the social application "operating system" landgrab that began last May. With twice as many users, Myspace can seriously steal Facebook's thunder.
But the real fun begins when Myspace opens the floodgates by providing developers with access to the viral invitation and notifications channels that drove millions of application installs within the first few days of Facebook's platform launch last May. Until that happens, it seems that Myspace's platform itself will grow faster than its applications.
Will Myspace's application platform be successful? There's no question that Myspace's application platform is a little late to the game (and probably would not even exist if not for Facebook), but that will play to Myspace's advantage. Myspace can learn from Facebook's mistakes, and that's evident already with the controlled release of their platform, as opposed to Facebook's strategy, which many frustrated Facebook users perceived as one big spamathon.
Consider also that Myspace users are probably more open to applications than Facebook users were last May. Myspace always allowed its users to take creative control over their profile spaces (a feature that started out as a bug) - allowing users to flare-up their profiles in any way they wanted. This paved the way for things like widgets from Slide or embeddable videos from YouTube to spread virally through Myspace's community (sound familiar?). These widgets really were the first social applications to gain widespread popularity, so in a sense, Myspace's new application platform is nothing more than a formalization of something that for the most part, already exists.
Myspace is in an excellent position to take control of the social application "operating system" landgrab that began last May. With twice as many users, Myspace can seriously steal Facebook's thunder.
