Posted by Eric Torres on Thu, Nov 18, 2010 @ 08:55 AM
Well this is interesting…MySpace and Facebook plan to make a joint announcement this afternoon about an unspecified venture, according to an invitations issued by MySpace late last night, as seen below.
All the emailed invite specifies is that there will be a webinar noon Pacific Time on Thursday, to be hosted by MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Dan Rose, Vice President of Partnerships and Platform Marketing at Facebook.
Given that the two companies were arch rivals just a few short years ago, the collaboration is a shocker. It's like receiving an invitation to a party thrown by the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. However, MySpace did effectively signal it was out of the competition last month after it repositioned itself as a social-entertainment destination. The change was intended to stabilize the News Corp.-owned company after years of struggle that saw its dominance of the social networking space effectively up-ended by Facebook and Twitter.
Given that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn't listed as a participant, it doesn't seem like it would be a HUGE announcement, like some sort of joint venture or merger. (Plus, MySpace is listed first.)
Is MySpace throwing in the towel and moving its social network over to Facebook's social graph, to focus on being an entertainment portal? Or is the MySpace "log in with Facebook" deal just getting some play for the press? Is MySpace planning to adopt the Facebook apps platform? Or could this be something ad-related?
The rumor mill in the tech blog world is swirling with predictions of what this announcement could be. Whatever it is, we’ll find out in a few short hours.
What do you think about this announcement?