MySpace to open up platform to developers

MySpace, the News Corp unit that is the world’s largest social network, is opening up to allow outside developers further access to its service, Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe said on Wednesday.

“We are opening our platform in the next couple of months,” DeWolfe said, confirming months of speculation that MySpace would take steps to counter the growth of smaller, but faster-growing competitor Facebook.com.

Speaking in an interview at the Web 2.0 conference with his boss, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corp media conglomerate, DeWolfe emphasized MySpace was an early proponent of openness relative to other social network sites.

Murdoch signaled a lower revenue expectation from a prior forecast of $800 million for MySpace’s fiscal year ending next June. “I might say 750 (million) but it’s at least 30 times what it was the day we bought it two years ago,” he said.

For four years, it has allowed users to embed features from other Web sites by pasting bits of code on their MySpace pages. “YouTube, for one, basically generated all their early traffic on MySpace,” he said of the company’s traditional willingness to let other Web companies build businesses on MySpace.