Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Multimedia, Software, Developer, iPhone
MySpace web app on the iPhone
Jake Marsh sent along this neat screencast of an iPhone web app for MySpace that he's working on. Facebook basically seems to be the gold standard of social networking web apps these days, and this looks basically just like that one. It is cool that you can look up people right away, but the real improvements are on MySpace's Music pages -- not only can you subscribe directly from the profile, but he's also got it working to play all the music there (usually trapped in Flash, though there is a less easy way around it already). He also says that it might eventually be possible, for songs that are available for download, to get them with one click into the iPhone's iPod library.
Yes, it looks just like Facebook (in fact, it looks like a rip of the mobile site), but why fix something that's not broken? Unfortunately, Marsh is just showing off -- he says that it's just for him right now and he's aiming for an open beta in August. He should probably aim for a little sooner than that: after June, we might all be saying "what web apps?"
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howie Isaacks said 11:15AM on 4-24-2008
It's a bit clunky but, it's nice to see MySpace paying attention to the iPhone users.
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Ryan said 11:39AM on 4-24-2008
I was under the impression that this guy was doing it on his own (his resume says nothing about doing this app as a hired job), not myspace.
Would suck if just a couple of weeks before he plans on releasing his, myspace releases a native one.
Grifforama said 1:15PM on 4-24-2008
If you read the developers notes on his youtube page, he's admitted to stealing Facebook verbatim. There is no way Facebook will allow him to go public with this. And My Space are bound to be doing something with iphone 2.0
William Hook said 11:29AM on 4-24-2008
That looks incredibly ripped off from the Facebook site.
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Retro_X said 2:21PM on 4-24-2008
That's because it is...
Alex P said 11:30AM on 4-24-2008
I really disagree with him basically just stealing facebook's JS and CSS and apparently getting praised for it around the net...
Also, I don't think people are just going to forget WebApps come June. There are some things that just suit themselves to being done in a browser, generally finding out simple information: it's not worth getting a desktop app just to look up cinema times, so why would it be worth doing on an iPhone?? A social networking app, again, works well on the net, so I don't see them as needing a native app... but I may be forced to reconsider that if Facebook blows everyone out of the water with some awesome native app! ;)
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David said 11:43AM on 4-24-2008
Why is it that "news" come up on TUAW days after the actual news surface on the web?
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dagamer34 said 12:42PM on 4-24-2008
TUAW should not be rewarding copying of Javascript and CSS code with free publicity.
Besides, MySpace isn't that great anyway.
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Carlo said 12:49PM on 4-24-2008
Did they just replace the facebook logo with the myspace one and call it a day?
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FetalSage said 2:20PM on 4-24-2008
I'd much rather see him design a more unique layout of his mobile myspace instead of just ripping off the Facebook app.
Though, he's doing a much better job at creating a mobile version of myspace than myspace itself
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ddebor said 3:00PM on 4-24-2008
A little off topic but I was wondering what these people use to make screencasts of the iPhone. Obviously you can't get Apple's special cable used for demos but people still do it. How is this able to be done and where can I get a cable?
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