The MySpace Developer Platform site provides tools, methods and a testing ground for third-party developers to create applications that will be made available to MySpace users beginning in March. The site also includes a blog for product updates and platform news, forums, documentation and "test harnesses," where developers can try out their applications in a working environment.

A Balancing Act

By providing a test site and other measures, MySpace is trying to avoid the privacy problems that competitor Facebook encountered as it opened up its environment.

When the results are rolled out to users in March, MySpace will also launch an Application Gallery so members can make choices. The applications will use such technologies as Caja, a "javascript sanitizer" developed with Google so Javascript can be used securely.

MySpace applications "will be governed by the same privacy controls that are in place for members," said CTO Aber Whitcomb. He added that applications "will never have access to information that cannot be found on any member's profile page," and they will go through a "rigorous safety review process" before going live.

Social-networking platforms are "converging on a model that optimizes the balance between too little privacy on the one hand and too little value for advertisers on the other," said Andrew Frank, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. He added that MySpace, a member of the News Corp. corporate family, has a culture that understands how to position advertising appropriately.

But, Frank warned, the "spam world" is just beginning to take note of the possibilities offered by the new social-networking platforms and applications.

Convergence With Enterprise?

The possibilities for the consumer could begin to merge with opportunities for businesses.

For instance, the developer site includes three APIs (application programming interfaces). One of them is a server -to-server communication agent called REST, and Brad Shimmin of Current Analysis said REST "signals for me that convergence with the enterprise will happen quickly."

REST, he noted, enables machine-to-machine Web services, and this could allow business information to be communicated in the background between a user's business and home environments. He compared it to IBM's adapting Google Gadgets to its business applications, and to the relatively rapid pace at which instant messaging -- once considered a home-based communication -- has become part of the working world. "The two worlds of enterprise- and consumer-based social networking are converging," he said.