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It’s a tricky thing for a company—convincing people that they have a space of their own (as long as they follow certain communal rules) while retaining control over what actually happens there. In the past, when MySpace exercised its technological ability to block other services from being integrated into its members’ pages, the Fox Interactive Media flagship often blamed it on faulty coding or some other error. The fix would be made and it seemed like most of the members would quiet back down-- usually after blaming Rupert Murdoch for being greedy even when he had nothing to do with it. But, as the NYT lays out, MySpace has been limiting non-News Corp. embedding intentionally, irking some of its devoted following including MySpace poster girl Tila Tequila. Turns out she was using a player and music store called the Hooka from Indie911 and MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson was upset. The player disappeared, yanked, MySpace told the NYT, by Tequila herself after she heard from Anderson. (Really, of all the people to honk off, why pick one with 1.7 million “friends” unless you want to make a very big point?)
MySpace says it violates the TOS to embed widgets that sell or advertise without authorization or without doing it as a partnership with the company. On the front end it makes sense. Why should anyone besides News Corp. be able to deliver ads and conduct transactions on its own social network? It’s blocked Revver although it never managed to stick with blocking YouTube despite some blips. That still rankles as is apparent in this comment from FIM chief revenue officer Michael Barrett a few weeks ago: “We probably should have stopped YouTube. YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”
But the nature of a MySpace runs counter to that concern. Well, what people think the nature of a MySpace was meant to be. What they forget is MySpace was always meant to be a business. Fred Wilson and others contend that News Corp. risks that business by alienating members. For now, MySpace is probably large enough to sustain some loss of users over issues like this. How it will effect growth is a different question.