It was only a matter of time: MySpace has sent a cease and desist letter to DatingAnyone, the dating site that made it easy to keep track of your friends' relationship status on their MySpace profiles. Techcrunch and Valleywag reported last week on an identical site - SingleStat.us - that suffered the same fate, so it was obvious the game was up. MySpace claims that DatingAnyone "constitutes an automated script program" and that "such programs place an undue burden on the MySpace servers".
The letter also claims that "the use of the MySpace website in connection [with] a commercial endeavor is expressly prohibited". It would be interesting to know whether this section covers the services that plug in to MySpace, as well as the scrapers - would MySpace block YouTube if the videos included ads? Or how about Revver, which already inserts ads into every video?