Filed under: Launches, Consumer experience, News Corp’B’ (NWS)

The No.2 social network, Facebook, began a program several months ago that lets software developers have code to build applications to work on its platform. Industry and news reports indicate that this flowering of new features has helped Facebook grow faster than industry leader MySpace, a part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS).

In a move to try to counter developer interest in Facebook, MySpace will also open up much of its software to third party developers so that they can build applications to operate on the huge social network. According to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], which is also owned by News Corp, “the online community MySpace is introducing tools for developing games, media-sharing features and other programs that better integrate with the Internet’s leading social-networking site.”

MySpace will also allow developers to earn revenue off ad dollars associated with use of their applications.

The move may be a little late. While MySpace still has the larger audience, according to online measurement service Compete, MySpace traffic is only up 4% over the last year based on December numbers. Facebook traffic has risen 112% over the same period.

Opening its platform may not be able to get MySpace back its loss of momentum.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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