Angry in the Great White North

People with MySpace pages have often used them to experiment with how to use the web to reach readers, and potential customers. That commercialization is what bothers the people at News Corp, who own MySpace. They want to make sure that commercial ventures on MySpace operate on their terms only:

MySpace, the Web's largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.

At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corp., to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

I understand where News Corp is coming from. In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million. At the time, Murdoch said that MySpace would drive traffic to Fox TV sites.

A casual inspection of the MySpace home page reveals no Fox links. Closer inspection shows that the "TV On Demand" link takes the user to a Fox TV site. Not that it helps me -- the videos won't play for an IP address originating outside of the United States.

To me, it seems that News Corp has not pursued an aggressive program of linking MySpace to Fox TV. MySpace is not even strongly branded as a part of News Corp or related to Fox TV -- the MySpace About page mentions no corporate relationship.

If that's the case, the argument that News Corp is pursuing a different monetization strategy makes sense. And that they want to control just how MySpace is being used to create commercial deals is also the obvious approach.

But this change in approach is upsetting people:

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

"The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly," wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace's most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. "MySpace will now only allow you to use 'MySpace' things."

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software--also called widgets--when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

So is it still MySpace? Some people think this corporate interference destroys the purpose of a service like MySpace:

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace's actions undercut the notion that the social networks' users have complete creative freedom. "We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can't do anything that violates terms of service," he said.

So who wins? Is this about the tenants, or about the landlords? The problem with the renter metaphor is that MySpace users aren't actually paying anything except the time they spend working on their pages. That time represents value to the landlord, News Corp, but unlike real shelter, a virtual home can be vacated in an instant:

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist who invests in social media companies, said the strategy showed that the News Corporation was trying to take advantage of growing interest in widgets while also trying to carefully control what made it onto MySpace.

But that could be a dangerous strategy, Wilson said.

"Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person's Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty," he said. "You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone's experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web."

In fact, the problem with MySpace and Facebook and these other social media networks is that the pages require such little effort to set up that they represent little value to the user. I've spent countless hours working on my site (no, really -- I know it doesn't show). That time investment makes my space valuable to me. But a MySpace page or a Facebook page is set up in moments from a simple toolbox and according to a set layout. That makes it accessible to a wide audience that would be intimidated into paralysis by Movable Type, but it also makes the space essentially disposable. Others have noted the same thing:

Several weeks ago, I finally signed up for an account [on MySpace], and within seconds I was instantly put-off by what had been created for me: a hastily-designed "profile page" with uninspired colors, misaligned tables, and a mish-mash of extraneous cruft and design elements which made this feel more like a halfway house than a "home". Now, granted, I am a designer by trade so my tolerance for this stuff is orders of magnitude lower than most of the population, but clearly, this was not a place I even felt comfortable having my name on.

Movable Type requires that level of investment to make the system work. MySpace does not, and the vast majority of the millions of users make no such investment. That tenuous connection to the MySpace product has to be carefully factored by News Corp if they decide to pursue a heavy-handed agenda of content control.