From a report by Emma Barnett in The Telegraph today, Facebook and MySpace have confirmed they are in talks about sharing content across the two sites.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook‘s chief operating officer, was quoted as saying the deal could see MySpace music and video being shared via Facebook’s Connect platform that allows users to log into third party sites using their Facebook ID.
Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told The Telegraph:
Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy. We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.
The two companies share some common ancestry with MySpace Chief Executive Owen Van Natta having previously worked as Facebook’s chief revenue officer.
Van Natta said partnerships were a core part of MySpace strategy and he saw clear synergies between the two giants of the social networking world.
Facebook is about core communications with your friendship network, whereas MySpace is about congregating around popular content with people who share your interests.
Van Natta recently said that he no longer considers Facebook as competition and with MySpace pushing to offer more content, particularly music, a tie up between the two companies looks increasingly beneficial to both. MySpace has around 100 million unique users but has had an increasingly tougher time growing of late, while Facebook has continued with its relentless rise and rise and now counts 300 million unique users or so.
