Last fall, MySpace.com looked like a dance club in need of a new DJ.
Its users were spending less time on the social networking site as upstart Facebook Inc. added new ones at a breakneck pace and stole the spotlight with splashy interactive features that MySpace lacked.
"Facebook awoke the sleeping giant," said social networking expert Joseph Smarr, an engineer for online address book Plaxo Inc.
So MySpace went to Silicon Valley to get its mojo back. To counter the perception that it was a digital laggard run by Beverly Hills posers without technical chops, it set out to win over the inventive software developers who make the entertaining applications that keep users hanging around.
MySpace was the first to attract these developers with its mass audience, but Facebook had grown popular by allowing them to cash in on features they created that allowed users to throw food at each other (called FoodFight) or join social or political causes (called Causes).
MySpace decided to win back these developers by making it easier for them to make money from their viral creations.
Now, that campaign is beginning to pay off. About 1,000 new applications created for MySpace in the past two months by more than 10,000 developers have helped keep MySpace's 117 million users on the site longer.
Some major Internet players - Yahoo Inc., EBay Inc. and hot start-up Twitter - have backed a MySpace initiative that lets users bring their profiles and network of friends to these sites.
"We're obviously huge believers in social media," MySpace Chief Executive Officer Christopher T. DeWolfe said. "We've been in business for four years. We've pioneered new revenue streams. ... Now, it's just a function of broadening relationships and leveraging the special capabilities we have."
Facebook's initiative last May to invite developers to create entertaining features for its users was an instant success: It spawned what has been dubbed "the Facebook economy."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the initiative at a packed event. "Right now, social networks are closed platforms," he said. "Today we are going to end that."
Soon developers were dreaming up all kinds of features, ranging from the practical, such as buying music or scouting vacation spots, to the quirky, such as biting your friends to turn them into zombies. The features spread quickly because users could alert their friends when they added them. As Facebook's population skyrocketed, MySpace grew uneasy.
