It wasn’t very long ago that MySpace launched what are being dubbed the company’s South Korean and Indian “chapters." So before MySpace gets entirely familiar with the region, the company’s chief operating officer, Amit Kapur, spent a moment explaining the company’s plans for South and Southeast Asian growth.
Kapur talked with Priyanka Joshi of India’s Business Standard, a partner of FT.com, and revealed some rather peculiar information that, if true, may cause an irregular markets to form upon News Corp’s primary social Web property.
As we reported last month, MySpace intends for there to be original television content broadcast via MySpace India as well as the promotion of an open platform for third-party developers. Yet Kapur has laid bare the company’s intention not to “mirror what it offers in international markets,” as Joshi shaped the question, but instead will “offer a host of third-party widgets created by Indian developers.”
Now, on its face, that seems like a sensible path to take. Indian developers know the Indian market, one would logically argue. Yet it seems almost completely antithetical to the idea of global competition that MySpace would segment developers focused on its main US-based operations to remain largely disconnected from foreign affiliates. If it is indeed the will of the worldwide market for competition to stretch across the seas in the sectors of manufacturing and some portions of the IT support and development structures of Western companies, would it not be appropriate to fully allow Western developers, some of whom are quite well connected with the trends and movements of Asian markets, to offer services to MySpace users wherever they may be located - China, South Korean, India, and elsewhere?