[more on myspace being their space]

Hosting people's lives online has become big business: services like Flickr and Photobucket serve as a virtual shoe box for millions of photographs, while YouTube and MySpace Video regularly serve up a daily dose of video blogs, home videos, and crazy stunts. But what happens when some of those services depend on the others in order to grow, and the others don't like being used to help the competition?
That's a thorny issue that MySpace has found itself in the middle of, and they're not backing down. The latest: the Powers That Be™ behind MySpace made another move to block content hosted by competitors from being embedded on user profile pages within the site—this time, the popular photo and video hosting site Photobucket.
Photobucket now joins the list of several companies understandably displeased with such developments at MySpace, as they all stand to lose traffic and mindshare as a result. A post on the Photobucket blog points out MySpace's action and asks its 40+ million users to e-mail MySpace to tell them what they think. "We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media," writes Photobucket. "MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit."
MySpace's pattern of blocking video and music widgets from competing sites over the last few months has worried Internet users that MySpace was moving toward a closed-content system. The move to block Photobucket videos comes about two months after MySpace's decision to block embedded widgets from Imeem, a music and video sharing site, and a month previous to that, video sharing site Revver.
MySpace maintains, however, that the company is not blocking content from competitors—they are merely blocking content that contains advertising. "Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slideshow and encouraged users to post these ads in bulletins and profiles throughout the community," a MySpace spokesperson said in a statement to Ars Technica. "We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community's terms and we had no choice but to disable their service."
Photobucket, on the other hand, disagrees. "Photobucket was not contacted by MySpace about this issue," a Photobucket spokesperson told Ars in response to MySpace's statement. He went on to explain that Photobucket allows users to combine their own content with that of "brands" in order to create personalized slideshows and videos, which is what MySpace appears to take issue with. "Some of our users choose to share their slideshows with friends on blogs and social networks, of which MySpace is obviously one,." Photobucket said. This content is not clickable and does not generate revenue for Photobucket—only the branded content and environments on Photobucket do that."
Putting aside technicalities about what constitutes an advertisement, MySpace's claim might explain why content from the most popular video sharing site, YouTube, can still be embedded on MySpace pages. That, or MySpace could still simply be trying to figure out how much of a backlash there would be if they stopped allowing content from the only video sharing site bigger than their own. MySpace isn't stupid; they're aware that these other media hosting sites are gaining viewership because of MySpace, and even said so during September's Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference. There, News Corp. CEO Peter Chernin specifically named YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, "or any of the next-generation Web applications" as being "driven off the back of MySpace."
This sends a major message out to services that are dependent upon larger sites to carry their numbers: don't push it, because MySpace is still in charge. Even if the company wants to hide behind the claim that they're only blocking content that contain advertisements, it's not hard to understand that MySpace prefer its users make use of its own a hosting services over the competition's. Whatever MySpace's true motivation is, it's clear that the company is doing its best to ensure that no one is making an actual profit off of MySpace's popularity except for MySpace.

MySpace to content providers: it's OurSpace, we're in charge
By Jacqui Cheng Published: April 12, 2007 - 01:25AM CT

[not myspace anymore]

From :

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.

MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.


At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.

Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”

Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

The tussle between MySpace and Indie911 underscores tensions between established Internet companies and the latest generation of Web start-ups. Without a critical mass of visitors to their sites, many of these smaller companies are devising strategies that involve clamping on to sites like MySpace and Facebook and trying to make money off their traffic.

MySpace, meanwhile, is trying to show that it can generate stable revenue. Google will pay it at least $900 million over the next three years to serve ads to the site’s users. And last fall, MySpace announced a partnership with Snocap, a San Francisco-based company, to sell music.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this year, MySpace blocked widgets from Revver, a video-sharing site that embeds advertisements in its clips, and Imeem, a music buying service.

[...]

“We probably should have stopped YouTube,” Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, a part of the News Corporation, said in an interview in late February. “YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”

MySpace and its corporate parent say they want to find ways to support and exploit the growing widget economy. Last year, Fox Interactive Media introduced a service called Spring Widget. The service provides tools to help developers create widgets for use both on computer desktops and online networks like MySpace.

In a recent use of its technology, the studio behind the horror film “Dead Silence” used a Spring Widget tool on its promotional MySpace page to count down the minutes until the film’s release.


Continue reading the article here.

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