With the news that MySpace is about to launch its new developer’s platform in early February, the buzz has been both excited and skeptical in nature.  Will MySpace offer new opportunities to developers?  Will it be as “open” in nature as the DataPortability and OpenSocial alignments promise?  Will the MySpace community respond with enthusiasm or will they raise the same privacy concerns and general annoyance voiced by the Facebook community?

Recent numbers suggest that a fair number of users are shared between platforms, which begs the question of whether or not the addition of apps to MySpace will be greeted by the community with the perception of “old news” or by a feeling of application burn-out?

Opportunity
The reason why people are getting excited:

1. It’s a new audience.  MySpace is a different crowd with different needs.  Life on MySpace is way more about self-expression than collaboration.  Applications could bring a much needed injection of socialness to the MySpace world, but it could also open up the opportunity for new applications ideas that address the unique nature of the MySpace audience.
2. It’s a new environment.  MySpace properties such as Music and Video, not to mention unique profile features such as blogging, are a great source of user-generated content just waiting for applications to help spread it around the social network.
3. MySpace can use Facebook’s mistakes as examples of “what to do” and “what not to do”.  Smart developers would look to the privacy concerns, applications with steep success drop-off, and applications with staying power to make educated choices when developing their apps.

Challenges
Not everything is cheery for MySpace.  There are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical.

1. Plenty of developers will quickly crowd the field in the same way they crowded Facebook. It’s inevitable. All of the great opportunities could easily get thrown away in the effort to be first.  The question will be how quick an application can be ported from Facebook to MySpace, rather than why it should or how to use learnings from Facebook to improve upon it.
2. MySpace is already innately cluttered.  It’s highly personal nature allows users to cover their pages in songs, images, and videos.  Will applications be able to compete with the “artistic” expression of the users?

Where Facebook Stands
Some people are suggesting that the most interesting advancement in social application development this year might come from the Facebook camp.  Despite an overall decrease in use of the most popular applications and the public blacklisting of applications that force invites, Facebook still has the advantage (rather than disadvantage) of time on its side. 

Some proof that Facebook is learning from its mistakes can been in the most recent updates to the applications platform, which includes more extensive “about” (the application) pages and user reviews on a scale of 1 to 5.  User reviews serve duel purpose of not only placing a value on applications, thus encouraging developers to actually create useful tools, but the user ratings are published to users feed, a useful viral component for developers.

On MySpace or Facebook, whatever the platform may be, 2008 looks like its poised to be the year to prove or disprove the usefulness of the social application.  Will it be a year filled with zombie bites or a year that brings us some amazing wonder app we wonder how we ever lived with out, an app that we will end up porting to our MySpace, our Facebook, our LinkedIn, our smartphones, and beyond?

Marta Strickland