VentureBeat

It’s official: MySpace, seeking to defend its status as the leading social network, will open up its platform to third-party developers over the next couple of months.

The news was confirmed tonight at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe were featured guests.

Like rival Facebook’s move six months ago, MySpace’s move will let developers build applications within MySpace and make money from them.

The full significance of this move — and of social networking platforms in general — is hard to tell. Despite the hype generated lately about the Facebook platform, few of the 6,000 or so applications are remarkable or particularly innovative. On the other hand, the applications are drawing traffic: Facebook’s platform applications see 14 million unique visitors a month, with 88 million visits for an average visit time of 4:30 minutes, according to Compete. We’ve heard estimates that the applications account for anywhere between two and 20 percent of Facebook’s overall traffic, something we’ve been trying to confirm.

MySpace, which still leads Facebook in overall users by a wide margin, was expected to make the move to embrace developers — as a way to ensure its leadership position.

However, MySpace has already let users install widgets from third parties. The difference is, now these widget-makers have the opportunity to build more complete applications for their existing MySpace users. Successful Facebook application developers will also have the opportunity to push their wares to MySpace.

RockYou and Slide, the leading widget providers on MySpace and application leaders on Facebook, both said that they have been waiting hungrily to push applications across MySpace and all the other social networks that plan to offer developer platforms — such as Hi5, Bebo and Tagged.

Even though Facebook’s open-platform move instigated the development of these rival platforms, Facebook’s has been a technical work in progress, with glitches still being regularly reported by developers.

News Corp.’s MySpace is opting for a slower approach, hoping to avoid some of the same problems.

In the next couple of weeks, the company says, it will release a directory of widgets already on its site.

Then, within the next couple of months, it will launch a platform that gives developers deeper access to MySpace data. Like Facebook, MySpace will offer application programming interfaces to its user data, so developers can build applications that run within MySpace. It will offer its own markup language for designing application user interfaces, and will let developers include Flash, Javascript and iFrames elements — also similar to what Facebook already offers. MySpace users will be able to share their profile information, activity on the site, lists of friends, and other personal data with developers’ third-party applications.

Asked by an audience member if MySpace planned to be more open than Facebook, DeWolfe smiled and said, “yes.”

It will initially offer third-party applications to only a subset of around two million MySpace users.

Next up: Google, which on Nov. 5 is expected to do something similar, starting with its social network, Orkut.
Separately, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch confirmed that MySpace co-founders DeWolfe and Anderson have signed a contract to work for MySpace for two years. There’s been speculation the pair are making $30 million over that time.
Asked by interviewer John Battelle what he thought of Silicon Valley culture, Murdoch responded: “In many ways it’s the most exciting place on earth, the center of innovation.”
In response to the rumors that Facebook is possibly raising money at up to a $15 billion valuation from Microsoft, Murdoch said it would mean Newscorp is “totally underpriced.” Facebook is known to be making much money, with reports putting revenue at $150 million this year, mostly from a sweet revenue deal with Microsoft. Newscorp has a $70 billion market value and will make $5 billion if the economy holds up, Murdoch said. More coverage here.
[Mark Coker, who covered the Murdoch talk at the Web 2.0 Summit, contributed to this report.]

MySpace will likely move to open its platform to outside developers of applications, much like Facebook has done, according to MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe in an interview with the FT.

Facebook’s open approach to outsiders — letting them freely plug in their services, and allowing them to make money — has sparked significant activity at the site — so much that it has raised questions about whether Facebook may eventually catch up with MySpace.

MySpace has provided limited access to developers, and forbids third-party sites from making money (under its terms of agreement).

“The [Facebook] platform is interesting,” Mr DeWolfe said in an interview with the Financial Times. He argued MySpace’s current technology approach gave its users many of the same benefits but said: “We’ll probably offer users the choice of both.” The aim was to attract more online companies to create services for MySpace’s users. “We’ll be bringing in more developers.”

MySpace is unveiling an independent Web site, MySpace TV tomorrow that people can visit to share and watch video, even if they have not signed up for MySpace — the company’s latest effort to go after YouTube’s top-dog status in video.

The site will offer new ways for members of MySpace to more easily integrate the videos they create and watch into their personal profiles, according to the NYT.

It will emphasize professional video — five minutes or longer — and also feature content owned by News Corp.’s other media properties, and by partners such as Sony. Later this year, MySpace plans to let users edit and combine videos on MySpace TV into new clips — using technology from Flektor, a start-up it just acquired.

Co-founder Chris DeWolfe tells the NYT that few have noticed that MySpace “has been focused on video and has quietly come within striking distance of YouTube.”

This comes as YouTube is working to build in more social networking features, so that it doesn’t lose ground to MySpace or Facebook — both fast-growing networking sites with video. YouTube is offering new tools allowing users to chat while they watch the same clip and share their favorite videos.

Meanwhile, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson (pictured above) have made a very aggressive compensation demand, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily:

…(some would term it rather fanciful) compensation proposal to owner News Corp for when their contract is up in October. They’re asking Peter Chernin and Rupert Murdoch for a 2-year deal worth $50 million total. That comes out to $25 million each, or $12.5 million a year. Plus, the pair want a development fund of $15 million to invest in internet companies.”

It’s well known the ownership stakes of the two founders were watered down significantly by the time MySpace was acquired by News Corp. They’re likely hoping for restitution, given the subsequent raging success of their creation.

The round-up of crucial stuff in Silicon Valley:

Did MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson get shortchanged? — VentureBeat has heard that MySpace, the biggest success of the Web 2.0 wave so far, in terms of users, wasn’t such a great a hit for the co-founders. Word is, Chris DeWolfe ended up with a mere $5 million, even though the company was sold as part of Intermix for $580 million. We haven’t been able to confirm this (MySpace declined comment), but that’s a pittance, if true. The founders were watered down considerably by investors.

The Mercury News has an interview with Ross Levinsohn (pictured above), who runs News Corp’s Fox Interactive division — and who was behind the purchase of MySpace — and asks him whether the co-founders are unhappy. He responds: “There’s no indication to me that they’re unhappy.”

Levinsohn spoke at the Web 2.0 conference today, and addressed a different thorn — Brad Greenspan, the former chief executive of Myspace, who keeps suing the company on allegations it lied to its investors about its value. Levinsohn said:

He’s lost every single motion he’s charged against us. It’s like when Mike Tyson kept trying to win this fight, and the guy kept getting up …It’s kinda sad…two years before we bought the company, they kicked him out. For a guy who got $40 or 50 million from the sale, I mean…life’s too short.

(via Valleywag)

Yahoo’s acquisition binge at screeching halt? — Yahoo’s stock is in the toilet, and maybe that’s why its lost is appetite to buy companies. Check out this chart of acquisitions by the big three over the past years. Google and Microsoft are munching companies as eagerly as ever (18 between them), whereas Yahoo has acquired just one (Jumpcut), according to this chart at least.

Timebridge raises $6 million for… yet another calendar-scheduling company? — The San Francisco start-up, founded in March of last year that, lets you schedule meetings easily within your calendar. It has launched a private testing version. Chief executive Yori Nelken showed VentureBeat a demo Monday, and it has some cool features to save time organizing meetings among two or more people — like letting users block out possible meeting times, and letting their friends or contacts see the times through a central “meeting space.” When the friend selects a time, the slot is automatically booked for both people. So why all the dough? The company has invested resources into integrating various clients — it has a plugin for Outlook, for a Web version, for Blackberry/Treo, Apple, Thunderbird, Notes, etc — that it can work on whatever calendar you have. Timebridge wants to serve the busy professional, and is letting Google conquer the consumer market.

Mayfield and Norwest are the backers. More details at the site’s tour; see top-right). The basic service will be free, but revenue will could from a subscription for added security, archiving and admin features. Nelken thinks the market would accept a range of $30 to a $100 per user per year. It might also get referral fees from companies like Open Table.

Mashery lets you outsource your development — It handles the open API process for companies.

FON now the largest WiFi access network — VentureBeat caught up with Neil Rimer Wednesday, investor in FON, a company that lets people share each other’s WiFi routers. He says the service is doing well in Europe, particularly in Spain, and now has more access points globally than than any other WiFi access point network, including Boingo and T-Mobile. It was also a good move to hire Joanna Rees Gallanter for U.S. operatons, because she can apparently “talk a dog off a meat wagon,” a different skill than running a venture firm. The Madrid company also bought the popular Firefox extension, GSpace, for an undisclosed amount, GigaOm first reported. The FireFox extension allows users to treat their GMail accounts as an online file storage locker — to be launched in Feb 2007, it is essentially a FON router that will have a USB 2.0 port.

Workday’s missed opportunity — Dave Duffield, the founder of PeopleSoft may be back with new start-up Workday, but critique Jeff Nolan says it missed the opportunity to say something new. In other words, it got great media coverage because of Duffield, but it was ho-hum in the details.

Will Flock’s new chief executive turn things around? — From the beginning, Flock, which was supposed to be a social browser, failed to meet hyped expectations. It had potential, but never executed. A new chief exec, Shawn Hardin, has taken over the Mountain View company. He’s a media veteran, having worked at Yahoo, AOL Broadband and NBC. We’ve just had a sneak peak at Flock’s 1.0 browser, and it’s got some promising features — question is, can Flock convince people to make their browser their central work place or not.

Charles River Ventures STIRRs — Fresh from announcing its new attractive seed investment strategy (where it gives out $250,000 checks to promising ideas, Silicon Valley venture firm Charles River is getting submerged by entrepreneurs eager to pitch. It’s also been invited to mix with the masses — at the Nov. 15 STIRR event, a gig usually reserved for start-ups to give one-minute pitches. The Charles River gang — George Zachary, Bill Tai, and Susan Wu — will get 60 seconds to pitch the crowd. We bumped into Susan Wu today at the Web 2.0 conference; she said she was overwhelmed with dealflow.

Lightspeed Venture Partners keeps adding — Silicon Valley venture firm Lightspeed just named three new associates, Patrick Chiang, Andrew Chung and John Vrionis (as you’ll see on this page of blue shirts). This is the firm that recently saw a split, with several partners leaving to form Opus. We won’t call the Opus guys renegades, because they also like blue shirts ;)