Social Climber: MySpace Toolbar For Your Browser
"It's a toolbar with the social functionality built in," said Amit Kapur, MySpace's COO, speaking at LeWeb 08 conference in Paris, PC World reports.
The MySpace toolbar will only function on PCs running Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browser, but the company is hoping to get a Mac version of the toolbar up and running soon.
The toolbar will automatically log MySpace users into their account once a browser is launched, streaming data, friend activity, mood and status updates. The MySpace toolbar is part of a larger effort by the social network to increase its visibility and data portability options, which the company had dubbed the MySpace Open Platform.
The MySpace Open Platform is being billed by MySpace as an open data portability platform that is compliant with OpenID, a single sign-on tool, and OpenSocial, an open developer platform from Google.
OpenID and OpenSocial are aimed at meshing together properties across the Web in an open-source way. Unlike Facebook Connect, which was launched last week, the MySpace Open Platform is not a proprietary system.
One area that users will not be able to access through the toolbar, however, is MySpace Music. That means that members of the network won't be able to stream music from their favorite band's MySpace page through the toolbar. The problem, according to Kapur, is a matter of monetizing the music aspect of MySpace.
"Part of the challenge [for MySpace Music] is having the right balance between music and monetization," said Kapur, PC World reports.