MySpace Announces Plans To Open Platform To Third Parties

Months after Facebook opened its doors to third-party developers and effectively claimed a near majority of headline space for a good portion of the year because of it, MySpace’s CEO Chris DeWolfe and his overlord, Rupert Murdoch, stood upon the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit to announce their company’s own intentions to do the very same.

MySpace plans to make an official debut when it’s finished polishing its new platform, a point it will reach in “a couple of months.”

There’s a bit of a caveat to this story, however. When MySpace does eventually “open” itself up, it will be a process done in stages. According to CNET’s Rafe Needleman, while developers may be granted access to the platform, only a “subset of users,” roughly 2 million in count, will be offered the option of experiencing those developers’ creations, in order for the company to ensure that the new system scales in “safe” and “reliable” fashion.

Seems reasonable, but perhaps it’s a bit inaccurate to say that full access by all of the network’s members to a catalogue of apps/widgets/whathaveyou will be given in a couple of months’ time. Perhaps the doors will fully open by the New Year. Perhaps later. If the recent histories of technology companies are any indication of what’s to come of this new delivery by MySpace, it’s that one should expect things to come later rather than sooner.

By the bye, what’s the deal with MySpace’s claim of 188 million users? Does that number not seem, you know, humorously inflated? Must’ve hit another huge growth spurt last week, eh? Sneaky, sneaky. Facebook’s 47-million-strong user base (a figure which I also think has its own bit of sugar coating) seems absolutely tiny when the two are sized up next to one another. Perhaps Murdoch placed 1 in front of a more “reasonable” estimate of 88 million (Nielsen puts the network at 78 million active users) in order to distinguish the darling of his Fox Interactive Media division from the darling of the online social networking industry. Or perhaps it’s simply another case of classic embellishment, News Corp style.

Whatever the case may be, MySpace is going to have to face the music, as it were, and try to match or surpass Facebook, both in terms of the experience it affords, and, more fundamentally, usability. Because Facebook is after all the benchmark in the game, despite MySpace’s clear advantage in the total number of users. And if one doesn’t equate to or beat the benchmark, one proceeds to slip, and eventually lose one’s spot. In this case, the top spot in a very large and potentially quite lucrative arena.