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MySpace has opened its popular social-networking platform to software developers, echoing a move credited with helping Facebook gain ground on its market-leading rival. MySpace premiered a Developer Platform Site created as a "sandbox" in which software wizards worldwide can craft mini-applications, called widgets, for MySpace member profile pages.

The site includes three sets of APIs -- Google OpenSocial with MySpace extensions to enable JavaScript and HTML; action scripts that allow Flash to communicate directly with MySpace APIs; and Representational State Transfer, or REST, APIs to speed up applications. In addition, the new site includes a developer team blog that will provide developers with product updates, news and documentation.

MySpace is starting with this test phase so that developers "can learn about the platform, test its features and functionality and actually build real applications that run on live MySpace profiles," said Kyle Brinkman, general manager of MySpace's developer platform. "We have a long history of applications built on MySpace in one way or another, but this is the first time we're directly engaging with the developer platform."

MySpace will also be putting in place new security technology to ensure that all applications are safe, the company added. One new tool is Caja, a JavaScript sanitizer being developed by Google with MySpace to make JavaScript safer for use on social networking sites.

Users with public profiles who install an application will be giving that application developer access to the information on their profile. Developers will not have access to profile information if that user's profile is private, unless the user makes the developer a friend, Brinkman said.

Smaller rival Facebook launched its developer site in May 2007, and in the meantime MySpace was able to learn from the qualities and flaws of their design. A lot of applications developed for Facebook will also soon pop up on MySpace. "How much that means direct competition with Facebook is a little undetermined," said Brinkman. "Fundamentally, we are providing a good experience for end members. That's what we care about."

The event marks the start of a period of behind the scenes use of the platform by developers to test it and, hopefully, have widgets ready for debut when MySpace publically opens an Application Gallery next month.

In 2005 MySpace was bought for USD 580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. MySpace joined in November Google's OpenSocial platform.