MySpace Shoots Large Hole In Foot?

User-generated haven MySpace recently made the bold move to stop Widgets from running on user pages. Users were adding widgets to their gaudy pages to play songs, videos, the weather. A few weeks ago, MySpace decided to block all widgets that weren’t MySpace widgets – maybe as a step towards commercializing the content on the user generated pages.

What the step did is restrict the freedom and anarchy that fueled the boom of MySpace. Will users flee from the service?

Fast Company blog says:

For users who don’t own a personal domain or blog, MySpace (despite its privacy issues) is a great way for them to share their identities and personal tastes with both offline and online friends. Besides all of the cool bands there, the personalization is one of the big draws for the millions of teens who hang out there. But lately, it’s becoming more difficult to use third party services on MySpace… The potential of users becoming frustrated enough with MySpace’s blockage of widget providers to the point of leaving the service could become inevitable at some point.

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch says that MySpace had got rather annoyed that, gawd-forbid, people were making money off their site with these widgets. MA says:

“It’s clear that MySpace isn’t happy with the fact that other services are building their business on the back of their massive user numbers – Peter Chernin, the COO of News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) said as much late last year and specifically named YouTube, Flickr and Photobucket as services that were “really driven off the back of MySpace.”

MySpace