THE DIGITAL BLUR

MySpace launched their developer area earlier this year, and last month announced new tools for marketersto manage their branded pages. Up until now marketers have had to work with the creative team at MySpace and provide assets that were ultimately put together by MySpace. I’m seeing more and more social network integration deals across all of the nets (MySpace, Facebook & Bebo are really the only ones that I track), so this makes a ton of sense. Oh yeah, did I mention that MySpace’s revenue in 2007 was around $1 billion?

I’ve heard rumors that MySpace is now deleting pages from marketers when they are not paid branded pages (although that rumor is still unconfirmed).

I caught this postabout MySpace charging for App promotion yesterday (it includes slides from MySpace’s powerpoint where they are pitching this product). Ultimately I believe that this is a good thing. Consumers are swimming in widget/application overload, it’s far too cluttered already. Clutter makes discovering relevant experiences more difficult, and it’s good to see some of ther reigns being pulled in on that. On the other hand, diversity also fosters the potential of the creation of relevant content and experiences in the first place. So it’s a balance that needs to be struck. This move of course also unevens the playing field for the little guy once again - but in business the playing field has never been, and will never be even anyway. Let’s just say that new media has made it a little more balanced, but “even” is a pipe-dream.

Ultimately, providing the distribution platform to developers, so they can produce applications for consumers, and making consumers available to marketers (with all the associated vaults of data behind them) is the formula for growth and success here.  I love this space - social media rocks.