Are social networking websites like Facebook, which is allowing users to draw on the system to launch their own services and make money ushering in a new era of social networking? More importantly, is it going to force companies like MySpace and MSN to follow suit?

Facebook seems to allow a seamless integration of personal and corporate applications with other programmes on the Net. It’s now making headlines worldwide because of this ability to take social networking to a new plane. Perhaps this development is going to force companies like MySpace and MSN to open up their systems as well, and move away from the proprietary nature of their service.

Hawk-eyed pundits watching the developments closely are saying that if Facebook’s tactics work, and big successes follow, founder Mark Zuckerberg’s open system could become a sort of operating software system for the Internet. What’s more, new services could be developed and launched for global use from this. The bottomline being that this system would become a version of heaven for thousands of small but innovative Internet software application and content providers.

In fact, analysts say that Facebook is getting the competition pretty hot around the collar. They say Internet Media companies such as Yahoo, MSN and MySpace have a great deal to lose from Facebook’s open policy and are feeling pretty insecure. On the other hand, they point out that these and other companies certainly also have a lot to gain from such an open and transparent global operating application system.

The Internet is a relentlessly democratic, open and transparent medium. That’s why Rupert Murdoch buying MySpace was seen as a mixed blessing; the greatest threat being too much ‘corporatisation’ of the service. In part, concerns about corporatisation have borne fruit, and MySpace has been seeing lower and lower levels of loyalty from its users. Conversations with heavy users of social networks have repeatedly said that they thought too much banner and other advertising was creeping into it.

Really the big question now is whether Rupert Murdoch is going to try and acquire Facebook and ride the new wave, or is he simply going to introduce some key changes in MySpace and get the competition geared up for an all-out?

For more information: 2007 Global Digital Media -Content and Application Markets