Facebook members may never have to visit their lingering MySpace pages again thanks to a new application from Fuser.
The email aggregator service late Thursday launched a Facebook
application that allows users to view their MySpace messages, comments,
and bulletins all from within their Facebook page.
The company’s mission is to “create tools to simplify users’
digital lifestyles,” Fuser Chief Technology Officer Jeff Herman said.
This application “takes some of the goodness of Fuser’s mail product
and applies it to Facebook.”
Founded and backed by Jared Polis, who co-founded
bluemountainarts.com, Fuser’s core service is an ad-driven email
aggregator that allows members to access all of their email and social
network messages through one interface for free.
Although Mr. Herman sees MySpace and Facebook as two unique
platforms, he believes that a lot of people who are on MySpace are on
Facebook as well.
Hitwise numbers agree. About 20 percent of Facebook visitors
navigated to MySpace after visiting Facebook, according to an October
study from the researcher, up from 10 percent a year ago.
If users respond to Fuser's application, the company plans to
unveil more functionality, including the ability to respond to and
delete MySpace messages from within Facebook.
This application isn't exactly a MySpace killer. While Fuser was
eager to take advantage of Facebook’s open platform, the startup also
plans to move its application to other sites such as MySpace, allowing
the reverse effect. Plus, MySpace and Facebook serve different
demographics, Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang said.
MySpace’s media-driven site skews toward a younger demographic,
Mr. Owyang said. While MySpace is more about self-expression and artist
affiliation, Facebook is more of a networking tool. After launching
with a college-aged user base, Facebook now has its largest growing
demographic in the thirty-five and older range, he said.
Given that Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, and LinkedIn have already
opened up their platforms to third-party developers, and other social
networks promise to follow suit with Google’s OpenSocial, Mr. Owyang
expects the fluidity between networks to only increase.
Forrester Research predicts that the social graph, the online
representation of a person’s relationships, will become portable in
2008. For instance, if you are already on one social network, you will
soon be able to autopopulate any new social network you join with your
previously established contacts, explained Mr. Owyang.
The Fuser application for Facebook “is another example of how social networks are starting to be more amorphous,” he said.
Red Herring's April Kilcrease reported from Belmont.