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MySpace Platform Catching Up to Facebook

Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 14th, 2008 12:51 PM

It’s no secret that among social platform developers Facebook still reigns king. On MySpace though, while there may not be top applications like Top Friends which has close to 38 million installs on Facebook, the top application has over 6 million installs which would rank it among the top 30 applications on Facebook. As Ian Swanson said in my podcast with him last week, he has been seeing the MySpace platform gaining traction.

Additionally there is buzz that MySpace will soon begin adding features that help applications grow virally. Initially there were a lot of restrictions in place but as the restrictions decrease, applications are experiencing more traction. This strategy contrasts Facebook’s in which the platform was completely viral and there were no restrictions on viral growth. Over the past year, Facebook has placed an increasing number of restrictions on developers.

In my opinion this will help MySpace build more positive relationships with developers. While it took some time for the platform to gain traction, MySpace is increasingly become a platform that can compete with Facebook when it comes to reach. While the types of users differ across both platforms it is clear that the MySpace platform has become a viable competitor to the Facebook platform.

The quality of applications are also increasing. Just last night I was playing a flash version of the extremely popular Guitar Hero game. The application has attracted over 160,000 users and the quality is pretty damn good. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to improve my skills. While it’s not as good as the real game it is definitely a fun time.

As the MySpace platform matures I’d expect to see higher quality applications appear and a growth in the application install base. What has your experience been with the MySpace platform? Do you even use MySpace?

Posted in Social Networking
  

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 4 Comments

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    I always thought that MySpace was able to stand on is own against Facebook and i sustain it. just look at their iPhone apps.

    this is also a sign that OpenSocial may have a bright future afterall. just looking what is happening at hi5. then you also have to look at the Google Gadget strategy (that as you know follow closely) and see how those are going to integrate into Orkut and are changing everything in how iGoogle works.

    interesting times.
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    MySpace's developer platform certainly is growing - leaps and bounds - and "there's gold in them hills" for those willing to find it. OpenSocial will eventually overtake Facebook's platform. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of options for apps looking to make money with advertising on MySpace at this point. Most of the ad networks that have grown up to serve the Facebook audience haven't gotten their act together of MySpace and the value just isn't there.
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    While I'm usually an early adopter, having already suffered through one My Space experience, I'm waiting for the developer networks to embrace My Space - and define a real value. Too painful to deal with otherwise.
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    @Erik: Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of options for apps looking to make money with advertising on MySpace at this point.
    Cubics.com has been working on the MySpace platform since it officially went live. We're owned by Adknowledge with sales teams on 3 different continents including a dedicated brand sales team here in the US and they're working to sell inventory across all of the SNS that allow it.

    If you look at the most installed apps on MySpace, they're all basically from the same players: Slide, Zynga, RockYou, etc. We all know that MySpace has been stingy with allowing growth and we all know they've had growing pains. So I don't expect that any of the major players are focusing much attention on this area beyond capturing market share.

    One developer I spoke with had similar issues working on Hi5. For quite some time, they didn't run ads on that platform because it just wasn't ready to go. They felt that putting ads on a flaky app was just adding insult to injury. This was two months ago.

    Trust me, we're here and ready to help you monetize, but from the feedback I'm getting, it's a platform issue.

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