At Monday’s ad:tech Conference in New York, MySpace announced the launch of SelfServe, a self-service advertising platform for marketers. While the service is targeted toward small businesses, politicians, organizations and others who would like to tap the MySpace audience for advertising, anyone can create an ad.

According to a statement by Michael Barrett, Chief Revenue Officer at MySpace parent company, Fox Interactive Media, SelfServe will allow “anyone to create meaningful business and promotional campaigns through the vast friend networks they’ve built on the MySpace platform. Targeting is for everyone — from the smallest band to the biggest brand.”

According to MySpace, there are 23 million small and local businesses in the U.S., and about 10 million maintain a profile on the network. MySpace hopes to offer these businesses a way to tap into this business community – of which only about 1 million advertise online – and offer them a way to reach out to a targeted audience. Most of these businesses, they say, advertise only via search through outlets like Google and Yahoo.
Ad creators will have options to customize their ads and target them based on region, demographics and interest categories. MySpace will then offer analytics for tracking ad performance. Somewhat similar to Google AdSense, the ads will display across the social network. Advertisers will also be able to leverage their friend networks for promoting ads, similar to Facebook ad networks.

MySpace has used proprietary technology to compile extensive data on each user, including age, gender, geographic location and interests. This information is then used to fit users into approximately 1,000 categories – which will tell potential advertisers that not only are the users sports or film fans, but can share information about favorite teams or genres of film.

Minimum advertisement purchases start at $10 and pricing will be based on clicks to the advertiser’s profile. While initially, prices will be fixed CPC based on category, MySpace aims to later have auction based pricing.

This service had a soft launch in July, and currently has about 50 top advertisers testing the service, including Microsoft, Ford and Taco Bell.

The social networking battle continues, with today’s major announcement coming from Facebook – which faced scrutiny after the launch of Google’s OpenSocial. Today at a press conference in New York City, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the details of Facebook Ads – which will allow businesses to create profiles (much like regular user profiles), posting multimedia content and spreading their marketing message to users. Today, more than 100,000 new Facebook Ads pages will be launched by various advertisers, including Coca Cola, Verizon and Microsoft to reach Facebook’s 50 million users.

Already, developers have created a number of applications to be used on the commercial profile pages for everything from booking restaurant reservations to providing company reviews.

As Zuckerberg explained, Facebook Ads will have three tiers:

• Businesses will be allowed to build pages on Facebook and connect with their target consumers through friend requests.
• A system has been created that supports the distribution of marketing messages virally through Facebook Social Ads.
• Facebook will also provide user data – including user activity, fan demographics, ad performance and trends – to marketers

In addition to major brands, Facebook pages will allow bands, local businesses, organizations and service companies (such as restaurants) to create profiles much in the same way as a regular Facebook user – inputting their profile information and expanding their profile through the use of a variety of commercial Facebook apps.

When a user accepts a particular commercial profile as a friend, they can elect to include messaging from that business in his feeds. For example, when reviews are posted about a particular restaurant, these reviews will appear in all friend feeds.

For in-depth analysis, check out a blog post by Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Timing for the launch of Facebook Ads was not yet announced at the time of the press conference, but stand by for the live site and check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/ads .

In its first day, Google’s OpenSocial already has third party developers announcing plans for applications to be created on the new platform. Using a combine and conquer approach, OpenSocial’s simplicity and multiple network compatibility has sent shock waves throughout the Web community. So how does it work?

First – in addition to Google’s partnership with MySpace, OpenSocial has solicited a number of participating social networks who will host OpenSocial APIs: Friendster, Slide.com, Flixster, iLike, Oracle, Viadeo, Hi5, Plaxo, Orkut, Ning, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com to start.

The ability for developers to work with a standard tools, includingHTML, JavaScript and XML, as well as the ability to embed Flash elements to create applications compatible with multiple networks will make it a serious competitor for Facebook’s custom programming language.

Another OpenSocial appeal - because OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, develops have the ability to create top-end, viral social apps with little to no serving costs. Through the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, complete social apps can be built with no server at all.

Code is released under Apache 2.0 license and all OpenSocial docs are Creative Common.

To learn more or get started with development, go to http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/.

The word’s out and the Web’s buzzing - as the countdown continues to the launch of Google’s OpenSocial, details about the platform and partnership with MySpace – the world’s largest social network have been flooding the Web. According to the joint press release issued by MySpace and Google:

“Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform,” said Chris DeWolfe, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MySpace. “This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We’re pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications.”

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access core functions and information in social networking sites:

• Profile Information
• Friend Information
• Activities

Developers will have access to the three JavaScript and Gdata APIs to access social functions, as well as a live developer sandbox on Orkut (http://sandbox.orkut.com). Additionally, Web sites will have access to a tool that will allow them to OpenSocial-enable their sites. The Orkut sandbox is already live, so that developers can start testing the OpenSocial APIs.

Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language, allowing developers to only slightly modify their existing code for apps. Additionally, OpenSocial apps can have full functionality on profile pages, whereas Facebook limits functionality to the canvas page.

“We’re all citizens of a larger Web—no network is an island onto itself,” said Aber Whitcomb, CTO of MySpace. “We look forward to continuing to develop great technology with Google and all of the OpenSocial participants. It’s exciting that social networks are getting social with each other.”

In addition to MySpace, the OpenSocial community includes Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

Starting tonight, developers can start writing applications for OpenSocial at which the MySpace Platform will support at launch.

With more than 250 million members worldwide, social networking sites offer a vast network of communities, both general interest and niche. Largely, the users that make up this community are comprised of young, Web-savvy consumers who are just forming their purchasing patterns. These users, largely between the ages of 18 and 34, are key markets for advertisers, given their high percentage of disposable income.

According to comScore’s The Score:, Social Networking, “Today, social networking sites provide consumers — especially those in the younger demographics — a way to connect with like-minded individuals to share their opinions and their passions. Savvy marketers, from Madonna to Nike and Honda, are taking note of the social networking phenomenon, and tapping the power of these wired influencers to spread their messages.”

And major corporations aren’t the only ones tapping into the social networking space. For example, garage bands have carved out their niche on MySpace, linking to their Web sites or to sites like CDBaby.com to sell albums, tee shirts, posters and other merchandise. However, until now, they have been unable to sell them directly through their MySpace profiles.

Facebook groups have widespread appeal for users, but group creators haven’t yet had the ability to take these groups offline through the creation of customized merchandise (i.e., tee shirts, posters, etc) – without directing users to an external site.

In the age of the Long Tail, where groups of all sizes can market their customized merchandise via the Web, LoungePress offers a solution to simply, effectively create customized, marketable products. Whether you’re seeking the ability to create products for corporate promotions or for a special event, fundraiser, band or campus organization, ME08 enables users to easily sell their personalized goods via their own custom storefront – adding their MEstore to their social networking profiles.

This seamless integration offers users the ability to showcase themselves, their bands, organizations or corporations on major social networking sites, while being able to sell their customized products through their profiles.

So the question here is, have you tapped social media yet?