MySpace Platform To Launch Next Week

Update: This has now been announced.

MySpace is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product. While this has been rumored since June, this is the first indication that the service is preparing to actually launch. And we also have information that suggests that it will be announced next week at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

The new developer platform, like Facebook Platform which was announced in May, will essentially be a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow third party developers to create applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Applications will need to be hosted on MySpace servers.

And in a big change in strategy for MySpace, developers will be able to serve their own advertising within their applications, and keep 100% of the revenue (Facebook also allows this).

Suddenly Facebook, with nearly 5,500 third party applications, has significant competition around their platform – Within a month both MySpace and Google (see our post here) will probably have launched their own services. Platform competition is great for developers, but it also means they need to create and maintain separate code for each platform they choose to play on. Someone is hopefully working on a startup that will streamline that process for people. Whoever does it first, and best, can have a winner on their hands.