MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users
Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded. — MySpace, the Web's largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second act of tension between MySpace and its most invested users. In January 2006, bloggers raged at Murdoch over the site's ownership; by December 2006, self-propagating worms were exploiting the very embeddable code that made profile pages feel personal. Against that backdrop, MySpace — which by comScore's November 2006 count had overtaken Yahoo in page views — is now tightening the screws on third-party widgets.
The distinction in this round is commercial, not just cosmetic: the tools being limited are music and video players that deliver their own advertising or enable transactions, meaning outside parties have been monetizing MySpace's traffic inside MySpace's pages. The friction lands on a user base already showing cracks — the corpus records teens describing the site as 'so last year' as far back as October 2006.
First-order effects
- Widget developers whose players carried their own advertising or transactions lose their access to MySpace's traffic unless they accept MySpace's terms, while users lose the customization layer that differentiated profiles.
Second-order effects
- Ad inventory flows back toward MySpace's own sales operation, squeezing out intermediaries who had been selling against MySpace's audience — and giving alienated power users one more reason to try rival networks amid the documented teen drift away from the site.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mature social platforms will systematically close open embed ecosystems once scale is achieved, trading the openness that fueled growth for control of monetization — the template question every subsequent platform governance fight inherits.
The trend: Social networks are moving from open embed-everything growth strategies toward closed, platform-controlled monetization as they mature into advertising businesses.