TechCrunch (via Baris) has reported that MySpace has started banning widgets to link to external sites.  TechCrunch concludes:

That’s a major blow against the viral spread of services like YouTube,
RockYou and countless emerging others. I’ve been talking to a lot of
widget vendors lately, and “it works in MySpace” is a now a primary
selling point. Companies are investing large amounts of money in
widgetizing content from one site onto another and MySpace is huge.
This move, in the name of security, will likely do serious damage to
the cottage industry of flash widgets in MySpace. In as much as users
love their widgets, that means this will do serious damage to MySpace
as well.

I am not sure about the potential damage to MySpace.  Baris is right in that MySpace should not care about the widget companies. However, MySpace must care about the user experience.  To the extent that MySpace can allow its users to express themselves on its platform to a degree that satisfies them, there should be no problems, and MySpace should continue its growth.  However, it’s getting more and more obvious that open source development models are more productive than closed systems.

The question ends up being, "just how demanding are MySpace users?"  Now that MySpace is mainstream, I think the expectations of its user base is declining.  The mainstream has tolerated mediocrity in traditional media for a long time.

Even though I am a big fan of open systems, I think I am with Baris on this.

Here’s a thoughtful post about the future of entertainment, by Alemsah Ozturk and Ozgur Alaz, the team behind Marketallica.  I find the mindmap interesting.

I think this is pretty interesting:

L.A. based clothing manufacturer American Apparel
has now opened a store in Second Life. Second Life citizens can buy
American Apparel clothing for themselves in the "real world" as well as
for their avatars in Second Life.

Great example of understanding your customers.

Marc Canter’s new venture PeopleAggregator is launching today (via Techcrunch).  I am curious to see the strides by Canter towards the holy grail of people-interoperability.

There have been moves in this direction by various ventures, such as Grou.ps and Ning.  But, this is the first attempt in creating a full-fledged network that integrates the other networks.  Related to my "Parasites" post today, I wonder how the SNS world will react.

Baris has an interesting post about Jonathan Miller’s declaration that AOL will aim to be more third-party friendly, and the contrast this declaration has with a few recent developments, including:

• eBay’s banning of RapLeaf
• MySpace’s banning of Singlestat.us and DatingAnyone

Baris has a good point that these third party services, in the interest of empowering the consumer, are actually developing a parasitic relationship with the services they interact with, stealing their traffic and converting it to ad revenue, sort of an arbitrage model.

He asks where the line can be drawn.  I suggest it’s the consumer’s choice.

eBay is in the business of creating a trusted marketplace. It offers its own reputation service.  This puts the new eBay seller at a disadvantage.  If she has invested in a strong reputation elsewhere, she should be able to use it on eBay.  In the most extreme case, eBay can demand an additional fee if she’d rather use her RapLeaf reputation instead of the eBay reputation.

Instead, eBay has banned RapLeaf.  Markets want to be more efficient, not less.  eBay, which has generally been a wise enemy of transaction friction, has chosen to dam the market force with their (still) monopolistic power.  In the long run, it’s not sustainable.

If anything, the move validates RapLeaf‘s value to the marketplace.  Congratulations, Auren!

Paul Graham’s got a new essay, exploring why so much creativity emerges out of the margin. Worth a read.

Also, I recently finished Paul Graham’s book Hackers & Painters. It’s a brilliant collection of essays and I highly recommend it.

I commented last week on the reported transaction between IPG and Facebook.  Well, it turns out that my suspicions were valid, and that the deal was a misunderstanding.  There has been a clarification, reported by Rafat Ali, that the deal consisted of:

• an agreement that IPG would spend $10m in advertising on Facebook,
• an equity stake of 0.5% in Facebook going to IPG, at a valuation around $500m, and;
• the two agreements were separate.

This will let me take both IPG and Facebook a lot more seriously down the line.

Nivi pulls this gem out of The Innovator’s Solution:

“Because the process of securing funding forces many potentially
disruptive ideas to get shaped instead as sustaining innovations that
target large and obvious markets, the very process of getting the money
to start a venture actually sends many of them on a march toward
failure.”

Food for thought…