Yesterday’s Widgets Live! conference provided an overview of an industry but I think there is enough interest in the social networking space to warrant a separate conference. I think Fox Interactive Media and Adobe should partner to create a MySpace conference in the first quarter of 2007 focused on integrating your content, brand, or products on MySpace. The event would cover topics such as the development of widgets, the right and wrong way to engage a social media community, help create new SpringWidgets and outline ways to work with Fox Interactive Media for continued success.
There are currently lots of developers creating embedable content for the MySpace community. A few products such as YouTube are in direct competition with similar products such as MySpace Video but there is a long tail of content such as rubbing a budda’s belly for good luck or counting down the days until school’s out that will be developed by multiple outside companies and help make MySpace a success. Comments from parent company News Corp execs such as Peter Chernin make these developers feel about as welcome as a fakester profile on Friendster.
FIM could do a really good thing and directly engage that community, shaping the content and quality present on its network. Adobe is an ideal partner since Flash is the preferred embed of MySpace and the basis of SpringWidgets. Host it in the winter when people are excited to leave the snow and come to southern California. Fox owns a few venues in town, which should make planning a lot easier.