Web 2.0: MySpace Takes Application Gallery Out Of Beta

Hoping to capture even more of the Web 2.0 ecosystem, MySpace on Thursday announced the official launch of its Application Gallery.

Tested in public beta for the better part of March, the site lets MySpace users browse applications and other Web 2.0 widgets and then drag and drop them into their MySpace home page and profile. The company boasts more than 1,000 approved applications in a selection of categories ranging from music, politics and causes, quizzes and polls, and video. MySpace said it has tracked more than 2.1 million installs of the various widgets within the MySpace community.

The MySpace developer tools include the Google-developed OpenSocial set of application programming interfaces. The APIs are for building apps in JavaScript and HTML that can be hosted on any social Web site.

"MySpace was the original open platform, and the MySpace Application Gallery is the evolution of that vision, taking MySpace users around the world to the next level and empowering them to take control of their online presence," Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace, said in a statement.

MySpace, which accounted for three-quarters of the Web traffic to social networks in the U.S. in 2007, and its second-place rival Facebook have been opening up their platforms to third-party developers in an attempt to add services that may attract advertisers and keep subscribers on the sites longer.

In February, MySpace opened its network to developers by providing the tools needed to build commercial applications that can run on the site at no charge. In return, MySpace hopes the new applications will keep subscribers on the site longer, which makes MySpace more valuable to advertisers. Rival Facebook launched in May 2007 its software tools for developers.