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MySpace Apps

Following Facebook's lead, MySpace is gearing up to accommodate third-party applications via the MySpace Developer Platform. [Link to MIT Tech Review article] [Link to Developer Platform page at MySpace]

Very interesting info from MySpace on the page that discusses their adoption of Open Social... tragedy of the commons:

While unrestrained CSS and HTML provided users with limitless ways to make their profiles look a certain way, it was JavaScript that allowed them to really plug into the MySpace experience. After MySpace launched, users began building JavaScript widgets that did anything from customizing friends lists to sending MySpace Mail. And applications they coded were not limited to their own profiles. Through a little known technology known as "cut and paste", users could "install" applications they liked on their own profiles.

Where did all this functionality come from? While no specific XML/JSON api was provided, users quickly wrote and disseminated scripts that used JavaScript to screen scrape the existing MySpace markup (in order to gather data), and to emit the proper http values to manipulate the data they gathered.

Of course, a completely open MySpace was a utopic ideal. The exploitation began. As nefarious people began perceiving value in having lots of illegitimate friends, causing mischief, and/or making a profit through spam, they began writing applications that broke the rules. While a well thought out, law abiding "send me a message" app would send messages only at the request of the user, an app built by a spammer would send as many messages as the user's bandwidth would allow.

As spammers propagated through the site, MySpace began blacklisting certain types of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We tried very hard to keep as much JavaScript as possible, but slowly and surely illegitimate users hacked away at our filters until finally JavaScript was banned entirely. That left third party application developers with only one dyanmic alternative: Flash. Sites like YouTube saw their birth as widely disseminated Flash decorations for MySpace profiles. Unfortunately, by this time such applications were completely locked out of the MySpace data stream.

jon posted this at 7:56 AM
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