MySpace opens up to developers in move on Facebook
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News Corp's MySpace, the world's  largest online social network, said on Wednesday it will allow  outside developers further access to its service to counter the  growth of smaller rival Facebook.
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The Web page building company forays into social networking with a new site that allows you to create an ultra-customized profile.
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Watch out MySpace, Facebook -- with new applications designed to enhance user experience -- is catching up as the online place for U.S. teens to socialize.
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MySpace Wednesday will begin letting programmers pre-register for its developer platform program, which will open for business next week.Interested developers will be able to sign up on the site to receive information about the MySpace Developer Platform, announced in October. Then next Tuesday, the developer site will become fully operational and feature documentation and API tools to build and test applications for MySpace, the world&#39;s most popular social networking service.Although over the years MySpace has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, some external developers to put their widgets on the social networking site, the upcoming program potentially&#160;opens the door to any coder&#160;by providing open APIs and makes it possible for developers to generate revenue from those applications.&quot;This gives developers deeper access to our community through APIs so they&#39;ll be able to build richer applications and also gives them an opportunity to build their business directly on MySpace. It&#39;s a natural step in the evolution of how we&#39;ve worked with third party developers,&quot; said Amit Kapur, who has just been appointed chief operating officer after being in charge of business development for several years.In October, the move was widely seen as a competitive response to rival&#160;Facebook&#39;s successful opening of its platform&#160;to outside developers in May, which has resulted in the creation of about 14,000 applications and widgets for that social networking site.Other social networking companies have also followed suit and decided to let external developers create applications for their sites. Moreover, in November, Google launched its&#160;OpenSocial initiative to promote industry-wide adoption of common APIs for social applications, so that developers can more easily port their applications to different sites. MySpace, along with others, has indicated it supports OpenSocial.As it gears up for the launch of the application development platform, MySpace has taken special care to put safeguards in place to prevent security and privacy breaches from third-party applications, Kapur said.&quot;A key interest we have as we launch this platform is to protect the user experience against things like application spam and security holes, so that&#39;ll be a major part of our launch. We&#39;re extremely committed to safety and security,&quot; he said.Facebook has been dealing with this problem, as some over-eager developers have built self-promotion features into their applications to spur their adoption. Since its platform launch, Facebook has tweaked its tools and APIs several times to address the problem of applications that annoy users with intrusive displays and unsolicited messages, and seems to have the issue well under control now.&#160;
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Social slump If all goes according to plan then MySpace will finally open its platform to developers on Tuesday, in keeping with plans announced last October. Details are vague but the youf social networking arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire has at least confirmed the platform will support Google's OpenSocial interface.â¦
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MySpace, a website considered the hip place to socialize online, announced it will enable members to sell their music.
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The social networking Web site MySpace is launching a free, advertising-supported cell phone version Monday as part of a wider bid by parent News Corp. to attract advertising for mobile Web sites.
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Facebook Inc. is offering to pay up to $250,000 to software developers who create applications that help make its rapidly growing online social network an even more compelling Internet hangout.
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Social operating system Facebook, the mainstream media web darling du jour, has opened up its development platform to allow other firms to develop applications to run on top of the site, broadening the range of features available to users.â¦
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Facebook will help other social networking sites to run applications developed for its own software platform, it said Thursday.
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MySpace will allow third-party software developers to create applications for the site from next week.
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MySpace, the social networking site,  on Tuesday said it formed a partnership with Oberon Media to  create a new gaming channel on the site.
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NEW YORK -- A Web site that enables its users to store photos and video for inclusion in MySpace profiles will become a part of the popular online hangout.
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The online application vendor has ported its productivity tools to the social networking site.
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Facebook, the social-network site that has enjoyed explosive growth in new members over the past three months, said it plans to let users tell the rest of the world how to find them on the site.
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Social-networking sites like the big three -- MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn -- act as a sort of shared address book, letting people post profiles, leave notes for one another and find out whom they know in common.
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A Facebook application can be hosted on any Web site that serves static HTML, the social networking site says.