If you're feeling like you don't know who you are online any more, MySpace would like to help you define your Web identity.
On Thursday, the News Corp.-owned social network unveiled the MySpace “Data Availability” initiative, designed to make it easier for Web 2.0 enthusiasts to update their personal profile information across a slew of websites.
Users looking to update personal information on their MySpace profile will now be able to dynamically share that data with other websites, including Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter.
“Historically social destinations on the Internet have operated as independent, autonomous islands,” MySpace chief executive officer and co-founder Chris DeWolfe said during a conference call.
“In the past few years, there have been attempts to build bridges across these gaps in access and data, but they were often done on a one-off basis and weren't scalable across the entire Web,” he said. “Today MySpace no longer operates as an autonomous island on the Internet.”
Once the service is up and running, users will be able to update information on their MySpace profile pictures, interests or favourite movies and immediately share that content with the other partner sites.
MySpace, the world's largest social network with nearly 120-million users, said the service would be ready in the next few weeks, but declined to offer a specific launch date. It also plans to offer a suite of tools designed for smaller websites that wish to incorporate the data sharing initiative in their own websites.
Even rival Facebook Inc. is welcome to sign on to the partnership, Mr. DeWolfe said.
“This project is open to any site out there that wants to work with us, so we're happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with us on that project, and that goes for any other site out there as well,” he said.
Rupert Murcoch's News Corp. purchased MySpace for $580-million (U.S.) in 2005, but many analysts suggest the site is now worth between $12-billion and $15-billion.
On Wednesday, Mr. Murdoch said the tumultuous U.S. economy is having a negative impact on advertising budgets and that as a result Fox Interactive Media – the division which oversees MySpace – would miss its stated annual revenue goal of $1-billion by 10 per cent.
Still, Mr. Murdoch said MySpace remains a “very healthy” business and expects FIM to generate “well over” $1-billion in revenue in fiscal 2009.
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