Sociablecode

Today MySpace announced a series of changes to their platform, changes that make many of the application developers angry and possibly depressed. In fact, I would say that developers themselves are becoming fatigued by the extraordinary amount of rules, regulations, and discrepancies that we face collectively. It feels like every attempt at virality is destroyed.

Sure enough, today was another day. Techcrunch did a decent job at summarizing basically what Tom was attempting to explain to us. I’ll try to sum it up in my own perspective which is sometimes valuable to people since I actively develop on the social network:

Essentially, users are complaining. MySpace is trying to clear up the issues and make a platform that rewards worthwhile applications in the right way.

To regulate us a few rules are in order: You cannot provide incentives to your users to help spread your application. This is obviously a direct hit to Own Your Friends on MySpace which has garnered 3 million users already.

Here’s the driving force here people. MySpace doesn’t give a shit about how viral you wish to become, they don’t want random people kicking each other in butt as a messaging mechanism. To them, opening up the platform is a way of getting viral a bit faster than you would normally on your own with your own startup. MySpace isn’t interested in how fast you can penetrate so you can achieve the highest revenue possible. Their game really appears to be about creating utilities they cannot create themselves. This is all certainly amicable however it’s not going to provide much incentive for developers who are interested in creating real applications as you’re afforded more control outside of MySpace and essentially the same incentive.

You need to think about this. MySpace’s numbers aren’t growing HUGE, they’ve tapped probably the largest portion of the U.S. on the internet. (that’s why we’re all developing there) Basically, they already have them all. They don’t need a platform to get MORE, they just need to keep them happy, engaged, willing to stay essentially. History has shown, that a large portion of the applications on Facebook are annoying, spamming, and essentially crap. What would you do if you were in the same position?

The thoughts behind this are: if you create a very valuable and interesting application, user adoption will trend much like a web startup except perhaps on steroids if it exists on MySpace. This is all hypothetical and perhaps quite wishful. postTo was sneaky attempt to stave us off as I have said before and this utility exists just not in modal box design as it is for our applications.

The world’s are clashing between money, value, quality, and rewards. Seems it’s time to sit down and think what’s right for the users for MySpace. Of course, all of us are ready with our pitchforks in hand waiting to chastise whoever created these rules

MySpace has one last attempt up its sleeve in terms of keeping us around:

“Finally, I’m pleased to give you all a heads-up that we will be enhancing our messaging APIs in June with the release of our Applications Communication Channel. “ACC” as we call it is a brand-new messaging service built specifically for apps that will enable custom app invites and notifications. More on that soon!”

Don’t screw this up MySpace, a compromise is in order if you plan to get people to stick around with your platform. There are other ways to ask for what you want without locking and restricting channels. The world isn’t so black and white in that good products always distribute themselves effectively because as you’ve seen so do crappy ones that know how to exploit channels fatiguing them well enough so nothing good makes it past the mark. postTo channels were fatigued before we even got here, we were never given a fair chance. Provide incentives to good applications, don’t be so damn afraid to punish bad ones, and regulate your channels–take a piece of advice from hi5.

Consider this, we have to deal with constant problems, downtime, and restrictions with a platform that is isn’t significantly viral. We do it because we hope for mechanisms that will provide greater distribution then we would get off-platform. You might be able to keep us around for a few months and toy with our minds but what’s going to keep us from stopping and realizing that the incentives are more or less the same outside your platform. I think it’s time you stop beating around the bush and tell us PRECISELY what ACC is, I for one am sick of all the damn secrecy only to be disappointed later.