Sometime last night, MySpace decided to shutout certain types of content from Photobucket. With this whole new web thing, we’ll call it web 2, much of it is predicated upon services building onto services. The mashup! One could even think of MySpace pages as a mashup of YouTube Videos, Photobucket slideshows, and whatever else may be. This is a big part of the reason MySpace has been successful. So what did they do? Pulled the plug on Photobucket.

There are many reasons why this is akin to shooting oneself in the foot. First off, if a user has a couple hundred pictures on Photobucket, they’re not going to suddenly upload all of those to MySpace. What they will do is get irritated with MySpace, and remember it.

The second thing this is doing is continuing to build the walls higher, so high not even they can see outside. When MySpace starts asserting that users have to use MySpace’s video, audio, or picture services they’re missing out on the bigger picture. Do they really want to compete with all of the little media startups who do the storing, the sharing, and the community so much better? Has anyone ever uploaded a picture at Photobucket or flickr versus uploading at “Oops we’ve encountered an error” MySpace?

In conclusion, I think the first problem is much scarier. The people I talk to tell of a MySpace that isn’t really fun anymore. It’s ridden with spam, fake friends, and a ton of errors. It’s in making moves like this that MySpace will really begin to sink. Their traffic is already on a downturn. The web2 is built on cooperation first, competition second. Either way, the users are most important, not the product. Social networks are the commodity, not the users.

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