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    MySpace backs UK developers with cash-prize competition and events

    Mike Butcher

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    Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

    Thursday, October 9th, 2008
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    MySpace is launching a UK MySpace Developer competition to build “the best sustainably social application,” and they’re throwing some money into the pot to incentivise developers out there. It’s obviously an attempt to kick-start more MySpace apps, but at least they are putting their money where their mouth is.

    Due to be announced at the the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference in London today, the competition is a call to software developers to create the ultimate MySpace application, as you’d expect. There’s going to be a juding panel to assess who wins the prizes, and the judges will be looking for how well the application enhances user-to-user interaction on social networks, with a key criterion for success being ‘sustainable sociability’. What does that mean in English? It means the user keeps the app in their profile and engages with them for months, not minutes. That’s quite a hard thing to do. I think it will be interesting to see who wins, because the models they use could well be applied to lots of other platforms.

    MySpace is really getting behind developers in the UK, which is good to see. The latest I have on Facebook is that the London Facebook Garage is also doing some some informal “App Awards”. But without much formal backing from Facebook here they are having to resort to awards like ‘Wackiest App’ and you won’t get any money if you win. That’s not the Garage’s fault – Facebook should back more real competitions in the UK.

    MySpace is also going to host some regional developer conferences and is launching something it calls the London Code and Coffee Club, though I haven’t got details on that as yet (maybe someone from MySpace will put the details in the comments?).

    Entries will be accepted from 1st November, with the top ten applications are being put through to a second-round in mid-January.

    Usefully, each of the ten short-listed applications will receive £10,000 of free advertising inventory on MySpace before the three winners are announced in March. Sun Startup Essentials UK and Flexiscale will provide free MySpace application hosting for developers who are active participants in the competition.

    Here is what’s up for grabs:

    • The best sustainably social application will win £10,000 and £100,000 advertising inventory on MySpace

    • The most popular application measured by daily use over a three-month period between January and March 2009, will win £2,500 and £10,000 worth of advertising inventory on MySpace

    • The best application created by a student will win £2,500 and £10,000 advertising inventory on MySpace

    The developer platform is here and the UK Developers MySpace page is here

    Chris Thorpe, Developer Platform Evangelist for MySpace UK is here. The judging panel for the MySpace Developer Competition has some great names associated with it:

    Patrick Chanezon (Google)
    Kristian Sergestrale (Playfish)
    Matt Jones (Dopplr)
    Andy Budd (Clearleft)
    Sam Michel (Chinwag)
    Simon Grice (Mashup Event)
    Richard Moross (moo.com)
    Michael Smith (Mind Candy)
    Saul Klein (The Accelerator Group)
    Stewart Townsend (Sun)
    Eddie Smith (Social Media)
    Tom Reynolds (blogger and ambulance driver)
    Devin Hunt (Fuzzwich)
    Mitch McAlister (MySpace UK)

    Originally I said yes to being on the panel as well, but on reflection I’m formally standing down from that as I’d rather be independent of this whole thing than be seen to be favouring one platform (MySpace) over another, like Facebook, or whatever.

    Good luck everyone. Go build great apps.

    • http://clockobj.co.uk Jon

      After years of MySpace slowely restricting and locking down their platform it’s fantastic news that they are finally embracing the developer community.

    • http://www.twitter.com/ukdevelopers Chris Thorpe

      Hey Mike (and thanks Jon for the positive comment)

      We’re sad you’re not going to be a judge, but totally understand. The London Code and Coffee Club is going to be a lo-fi grass roots thing, we’re going to hunt for a venue (somewhere which is quiet so we can all talk and which sells good coffee) and a time and place to meet (but when that is depends on everyone, so when is best folks?).

      All we’re going to do is help and organise it and be there, not like info pushers, but more because we’re developers too and we just want to hang out with people like us.

      The idea came from Devin Hunt. He and I talked and realised there was no really great ad-hoc geek meetup in London, which was all about code and ideas, where people could just hang out and chat, so this is what we want to do. So folks, where, when?

      Looking forward to meeting you all
      cheers
      Chris

    • http://www.adelph.us william

      Seems like a better way for myspace developers to help developers would be to release some of their services into Open Source.
      Maybe to start that can also find a way to give some of the revenue they generate on the backs of their members to the members communities.

      I have also seen that myspace has an ad nerwork. This is a nice move by myspace; but it continues to follow their stale old act of creating large amounts of revenue on the backs of members and their content.

      myspace is easily worth at least a billion, and where is the value coming from other than members/the communities content and activities.

      How much ad revenue is myspace sharing with members that generate ad revenue for them ? Are they giving anything back to the community that has put them where they are ?

      I am technology consultant, and this summer I became so feed up with the share cropper mentality of sites like myspace that I decided to build an application that shares the wealth that is created with the community.

      We also have a stand alone ad service and we have a granular micro revenue sharing service that allows members to share their revenue with Friends, Groups, or Causes.

      And unlike myspace and the rest we will be releasing most of the service to the open source community because we know we are not the smartest guys in the room.

    • http://happyt.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/future-of-web-apps-fowa08/ Future of Web Apps – FOWA08 « Changing colours along the way

      [...] They have a competition coming up. I couldn’t quickly find the mySpace page, but there is a TechCrunch page with the info. Have a look on their website. LinkedIn which is what I use in business, is way back [...]

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWtYlk-rt_o Ralpheal Jackson

      Wow If Only I Could Have New About This Last Year Around This Time! lol Great Blog!
      http://gvoopportunities.info

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