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Not to rain on MySpace yet again, but you'd think that as Facebook steals the limelight and the attention of developers, they'd at least be looking out for the huge ecosystem of MySpace layouts and add-on sites. Not so, say Pyzam.com, Glitter-graphics.com and MrDoe - all have found links to their sites disabled this week.
Unlike other "blocks", where MySpace would strip out certain URLs from user profiles, they're now using redirects on outbound links. As you might remember, MySpace began replacing outbound links in the comment sections with "msplinks", a sort of tinyURL system that allowed them to track outbound linking and presumably stop comment spamming. More recently, they expanded the system to MySpace profiles themselves: if you put a link anywhere on a MySpace profile, whether text, an image or otherwise, it will be replaced with a msplinks.com URL. Clicking it redirects you to the correct URL.
Except when it doesn't. Those aforementioned companies are complaining that MySpace has "hijacked" URLs from certain companies, redirecting their links not the 3rd party sites, but to the MySpace.com homepage. Pyzam, one of the largest in the MySpace ecosystem, is particularly noticeable for its inclusion.