MySpace is not a “Web 2.0″ company. Perhaps it is in terms of its age, but not in terms of its ethos. Here’s the controversy (blocking third party content). Here’s related coverage from NY Times’ Brad Stone, TechCrunch and GigaOM.
Here’s the now infamous quote from News Corp. COO Peter Chernin:
“If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace.”
This is a decidedly “Web 1.0″ attitude (which is still pervasive): We want to own all the traffic, advertising revenue and the end user. MySpace is flexing its muscles — because it can — and trying to enforce a traditional media ethos on its Internet community.
In the end, it won’t work and if Fox frustrates users with too restrictive policies its core users will go to Facebook (most are already there too) or elsewhere.
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Here’s my earlier, related post: Sharks, Lampreys and Widgets.
April 11, 2007 at 3:23 pm |
more insight here
http://startupcrunch.org/soundslides_shows_the_big_boys_the_right_way_to_combine_photos_with_audio
April 11, 2007 at 6:42 pm |
I think you are missing the point. They are not RANDOMLY blocking Photobucket. They are blocking them because Photobucket is serving ads on MySpace and trying to monetize MySpace traffic without permission. That is very different than just blocking a site for no reason.
April 12, 2007 at 4:25 am |
I was unaware of the ad sales aspect when I posted this a.m. However, the larger points I think remain valid.
April 12, 2007 at 12:43 pm |
[...] As Steve O’Hear notes at ZDNet, part of what helped MySpace take over from Friendster as the king of the social-networking scene was that it was more open and allowed users to do more. Notice that I didn’t say “do more, but only with MySpace’s built-in tools.” Greg Sterling of Screenwerk found the quote I was trying to recall from News Corp.’s COO about people sponging off MySpace. [...]