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MySpace Cuts Off Nose to Spite Face
Daily Ink
Stored in: Flickr News
Posted On: September 14 2006
By: Bryan Partington
Photo © McBeth
MySpace in a Mannequin.
Unreal, plastic .. kind of hollow. Sort of useless on its own, but a hell of a lot of fun to dress up. No wonder it has such tremendous youth appeal.
Funny then, that News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin things that the mannequin is more interesting than the clothing its users dress it up in.
Recently, MySpace deactivated external links in the flash widgets that users add to their profiles in order to add increased functionality, attempting to keep traffic inside the confines of MySpace. This functionality was reinstated after a rash of user complaints.
Now we get this endearing and ill-informed quote from Mister Chernin.
“If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” Chernin said at the conference. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”
Flickr driven off the back of MySpace? Certainly not.
Badges don't work on MySpace, for one. I've cased the joint, very few flickr photos can be found on MySpace at all.
MySpace is taking a competitive strategy that is very different from services like flickr, in that MySpace is attempting to edge out 3rd parties who develop products for its platform.
While in the short term this may increase MySpace's dominion, it is ultimately self destructive because it pushes outside innovation to the periphery... toward other, more welcoming hosts.
Someone asked me once if flickr's open API strategy was idealistic. After all, it would only help users pick up and leave the service if they ever became dissatisfied. "Business Suicide" they called it.
It isn't idealistic. It is simply a more farsighted view. Geotagging for flickr was born out of 3rd party development and brought into the flickr fold, not pushed out. If people really want to pack up and go elsewhere, they will do so with an API to help them or without it. Drawing the innovators, encouraging them, not edging them out... that is of far greater importance.
Otherwise, in Flickr News:
- Previously: Yahoo! Search and The Power of Groups
- Next: JPGmag.com - A Review
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
