MySpace Stops Selling Advertising to Applications

Last month I wrote that MySpace had begun charging for application promotion for developers. The fees were extremely expensive including $75,000 for a one week placement in the featured application section and $50,000 for featured app placement in the application directory. It appears as though times have changed.

In a blog post last night on the developer blog Stephanie Bergman wrote, that to become a featured application “It’s easy! Simply send your application name, link, and description to us at developerrelations (at) myspace.com. Our content folks pick out the best of the bunch, and run those as Editor’s Pick’s in the gallery. So if you’ve got a great app, send it in.”

This appears to be a shift from their original model of charging for featured placement. The amount being charge to application developers was pretty absurd even for the most wealthy companies that have millions in their bank accounts. My guess is that featured application placement was not as successful as they had hoped so they opened it up to everyone.

If you can no longer pay for featured application placement (as I assume is the case based on Stephanie Bergman’s post), this is a great step forward for the MySpace platform. They have removed any conflicts of interest and can now focus on building a premium social platform.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.