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MySpace will open its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications for the popular social network, reports the BBC.

MySpace will formally launch its “Developer Platform” next Tuesday but is already allowing people to sign up. The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.

Facebook opened up its site to outside developers last year. It has since had great success, with nearly 15,000 applications written for the site.

These include photo-sharing and music recommendation tools as well as games such as scrabble. However, despite its popularity, Facebook still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users. MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook.

Last October MySpace announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google’s platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website.

Other networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut already use the tools.

The tools, available from 5 February, will allow developers to build applications that make use of MySpace member profile information and their connections with other users.More at BBC News.

Mountain View, CA–November 1, 2007–Google today announced the release of OpenSocial — a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web — for developers of social applications and for websites that want to add social features. OpenSocial will unleash more powerful and pervasive social capabilities for the web, empowering developers to build far-reaching applications that users can enjoy regardless of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use.

The proliferation of unique APIs across dozens of social websites is forcing developers to choose which ones to write applications for — and then spend their time writing separately for each. OpenSocial gives developers of social applications a single set of APIs to learn for their applications to run on any OpenSocial-enabled website. By providing these simple, standards-based technologies, OpenSocial will speed innovation and bring more social features to more places across the web. Users win too: they get more interesting, engaging, and useful features faster.

Three APIs Available Now

The OpenSocial APIs give developers (with users’ permission) access to the data needed to build social applications: access to an application user’s profile information, their list of friends, and the ability to share their activities with friends. OpenSocial resources for developers and websites will be available at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.

Developers will have access to:
- Three JavaScript and Gdata APIs to access social functions
- A live developer sandbox on orkut at sandbox.orkut.com
- Sample code, documentation, and a support group available at code.google.com

Websites will have access to:
- A tool to help OpenSocial-enable their websites
- A support forum for communicating with Google and other websites
- Sample code, documentation, and a support group available at code.google.com

Server Optional

OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, so you can build a great, viral social app with little to no serving costs. With the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, you can build a complete social app with no server at all. Of course, you can also host your application on your own servers if you prefer. In all cases, Google’s gadget caching technology can ease your bandwidth demands should your app suddenly become a worldwide success.

MySpace

MySpace, the world’s largest social network, and Google today announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial— a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today’s announcement underscores MySpace’s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.

As a founding member of OpenSocial, MySpace will provide critical user mass and platform guidance. The OpenSocial standards are designed to evolve through contribution from the open source community and as new features are developed by various partners. Global members of the OpenSocial community include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. More at Google here and here

San Francisco, CA–November 1, ‘07–Google has signed on MySpace, the world’s largest social network, to its platform for allowing outside developers to write programs for social Web sites.

Reuters further reports, “The addition of MySpace gives the Google platform greater strength against fast-growing Facebook, which opened up its site to developers in May and has since seen its user base grow to more than 48 million people.

Google and MySpace said on Thursday they had been working together on the project for more than a year. News Corp.-owned MySpace has some 110 million users worldwide.

Google unveiled its OpenSocial platform earlier this week, saying it would give outside developers tools to write programs for any of its social network partners.”

Oct 30, ‘07 — The Associated Press is reporting on Google is setting up a distribution network for social networking applications, adding a new twist in the Internet search leader’s brewing rivalry with rapidly maturing startup Facebook.

Although Google confirmed its plans late Tuesday, its new social networking platform won’t be unveiled until later this week. On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.   

Google hopes to build a one-stop shop for software developers who create tools that make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. The popularity of these applications, also known as “widgets,” has grown dramatically since Facebook opened its Web site to accommodate outside developers five months ago. 

Facebook now hosts more than 8,000 widgets, helping to boost its worldwide audience to about 50 million users and elevate its market value to $15 billion after Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the Palo Alto-based company last week. More at AP