When it comes to social networking, there are two heavy hitters: MySpace and Facebook. MySpace has the numbers, but Facebook has been growing extremely quickly and could catch up.

Facebook is already an open platform that allows users to develop their own applications that users can insert in their profiles. It has been a huge success and there are already over 5000 custom apps helping to drive users to Facebook.

MySpace wants to jump in that boat, but will they be successful?



TheFeed doesn't think so. Sure, the MySpace userbase will enjoy the new applications, but we think the majority of applications will actually just be advertisements. Facebook seems to cater more toward the type of people that would actually create these applications themselves.

Companies are going to be the ones to jump at this opportunity because their thoughts of a Burger King application that advertises to everyone that visits a profile is just too good to pass up (have you seen those BK Xbox games?!). Furthermore, MySpace will allow applications to advertise independently and within the app itself and keep 100% of the revenue.

This is something Facebook allows as well, but as mentioned, MySpace users don't exactly seem like the computer programming type. However, to be fair, most of the Facebook applications are pretty useless. There are some gems hidden in the mix, but overall, they are just fun, little distractions.

These social networking sites are beginning to realize that an open-source environment leads innovation and creativity (and they don't have to pay the authors!). It's like Linux except people will actually use it.

It will be interesting to see if MySpace Platform launches with a redesign of their website, because as it stands, their website could just be the most poorly designed virtual space on the nets. MySpace is slow to use and riddled with terrible custom profile pages that make reflecting pool java applets look like minimalist Web 2.0 beauty.

We'll have more when the service officially launches next week, but until then, we've got friends to turn into zombies on Facebook.

TechCrunch: MySpace Platform To Launch Next Week