MySpace Wants Third Party Widgets

Posted on October 18, 2007

MySpace isn't going to let Facebook have all the fun. The BBC reports that MySpace is also going to be opening up their social network to third-party apps.

The move brings the website into line with rival Facebook, which has seen strong growth since it opened up to outside programmers.

Facebook has become a portal for services such as video, audio and photos since the change.

MySpace has more than 188 million registered users, compared to the 47 million who use Facebook.

MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $580m in 2005.

"We hoped it would do very well, but we never imagined it would do this well," Mr Murdoch told the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Third party applications can be built really fast and they can take off very quickly. It was only a few months ago - May of this year - that Facebook opened up its social network to third party apps. Just a month or so after that MySpace was reported to be jealous of Facebook's apps. Wired's Compiler blog says the platform will be opened in the next couple of months. MySpace has nearly four times the amount of users as Facebook so Facebook's several month head start in the widget wars probably isn't much of a lead at all.