Counterstrike: Murdoch, DeWolfe Announce MySpace Platform and New Privacy Controls
Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe announced some of their plans around the MySpace Platform (rumored since last week) this evening at the Web 2.0 conference during a Q&A with John Battelle.
Context & Ripple Effects
The announcement makes good on a signal from June, when the Financial Times reported MySpace would follow its rival's lead into opening up — this evening at Web 2.0, Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe confirmed the MySpace Platform that had been rumored since last week, after the company spent October 10 reaching out to third-party developers for input ahead of a launch slated for next week.
The new privacy controls are the other half of the message. After the 2006 backlash in which bloggers told Murdoch to get out of MySpace, user trust has been a standing liability for the News Corp-owned network, and Condé Nast Portfolio's same-day framing of the founders 're-upping' at News Corp underscores that DeWolfe remains the public face as the company courts developers. The Skype partnership, bringing voice chat to MySpaceIM from the end of November, rounds out a three-part push: platform, privacy, and communication.
First-order effects
- Third-party developers gain an official build surface on one of the web's largest social networks, with a launch expected within days of the announcement.
- From the end of November, MySpaceIM users get Skype-powered voice calls between accounts, part of a stated aim to create the world's largest online voice-connected community.
Second-order effects
- The rival whose platform move MySpace is following now competes head-to-head for the same third-party developers, splitting developer attention across two large social graphs.
- Skype gains distribution inside a mainstream social network rather than only its own client, widening its reach against other consumer voice providers.
Third-order effects
- With both major networks running open platforms, social networking shifts from walled garden to application ecosystem, making developer loyalty and the ad inventory it generates the contested resource.
- Privacy graduating from compliance headache to announced feature suggests user trust is becoming a competitive differentiator for social networks owned by traditional media companies like News Corp.
The trend: Social networks are converting closed communities into third-party developer platforms, pairing openness with visible privacy controls to defend user trust.