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"MySpace layouts is now the world's 9th most popular search term, according to the latest data coming out of Hitwise.  We've already seen how huge the market is around feeding the MySpace beast (creating Flash widgets for social networking profiles), but MySpace layouts are also a massive driver of traffic.  In fact, these sites are growing at about the same rate as MySpace itself - while the market share of visits to MySpace increased by 60% over the last 6 months, visits to the Hitwise \"Web Development\" category have increased by 57% over the same period.  The top sites are no doubt making big bucks from their ad-supported business models.  \nDesigners will also be overjoyed to learn that 9 of the top 10 web development sites in the world create MySpace layouts and flashing gifs.  Additionally, it's interesting to note that the top players are not simply those that have the highest Google ranking for \"MySpace Layouts\" (although there is some correlation).\nSo who are the big winners here?  I thought I'd do a quick, easy-to-read, fun-for-all-the-family  round up of the Top 10 companies in this booming sector.  The following are ranked by market share.\nFreeWebLayouts\nThe number one player, FreeWebLayouts, serves up fairly attractive off-the-shelf layouts.  They've also made the process incredibly simple - click on any profile you like and you'll instantly get some code to paste into your MySpace page.  Popular backgrounds tend to include celebrities and movie imagery.  It strikes me that this could be a huge opportunity for the movie studios: pay FreeWebLayouts to create and distribute a layout for your movie right before it comes out in theaters.  It would be a cheap grassroots effort and could generate a large amount of buzz.  \nFreeWebLayouts also has a profile creator that lets users develop their own customized MySpace layouts - not to mention the hundreds of buttons, banners and add-ons that are available.  Obviously all these elements will all link back to FreeWebLayouts when inserted into your MySpace profile - resulting in masses of traffic from MySpace.\n\nHotFreeLayouts\nThe second biggest player in this market provides MySpace backgrounds and graphics with TV and music themes.  What's more, you can quickly grab the \"MySpace codes\" to drop into your site.  HotFreeLayouts boasts that it has over 6,000 different layouts available, as well as customizable \"MySpace banners\", animated gifs and polls.  In fact, polls are another massively popular MySpace add-on - they're provided by many of the top players.  Additionally, you'll notice that HotFreeLayouts has an extremely sparse (some might say ugly) design.  This is a crucial point: when building tools for MySpace, your website design isn't all that important.\n\nPimpYourPro\nAs if to contradict my last point, the number three player is actually very well designed.  The pink and gray site serves up some of the most annoying MySpace additions imaginable - pop-up windows, glitter text, falling objects to overlay on your page and custom scrollbar colors.  But they also offer some neat stuff: the ability to quickly clone a MySpace layout you like, for instance.  \nLike all these sites, PimpYourPro has diversified beyond MySpace layouts - they also offer video codes (ala YouTube) and games, seemingly through partnerships with other sites.  A service like Bunchball should seriously consider partnering with one of these services to increase adoption.  In fact, anyone who is feeding the MySpace beast should make contact with all of these companies ASAP and try to strike a distribution deal.\n\nFreeCodeSource\nIn at number four is FreeCodeSource, sporting a totally tasteless design and plenty of bling.  You can't even begin to explain the number of items on offer - from MySpace layouts to generators, graphics, animations, \"MySpace cursors\", comment images, buttons, posters, banners and more.  And of course they've done some MySpace marketing (the new name for Branding 2.0) by asking users to add FreeCodeSource to their friends on MySpace.\nBlogthings\nThe fifth site in this category isn't really about MySpace layouts at all - instead, Blogthings provides quizzes to embed in your MySpace page.  These include \"What's Your Vampire Name?\", \"What Superhero Are You?\" and \"Are You Bipolar?\".  The page owner answers these questions then posts the results to his MySpace page - the idea is that this gives you some insight into the user's personality.  \nAdditionally, Blogthings generates custom html code for LiveJournal, Xanga, Facebook, MSN Spaces (aka Windows Live Spaces) and forums.  Another important point is that Blogthings offers multiple ways for users to be notified of new stuff.  Members can subscribe in MyYahoo, Xanga, MyAOL and LiveJournal.  A basic RSS feed is also offered, but I doubt it sees much usage.\n\nWhateverLife\nThe sixth player is a 70s-styled directory and guide that seems to be built on a blogging platform.  Instead of producing MySpace layouts and banners, WhateverLife provides advice and help on installing your layouts, producing overlapping text, creating tables and more.  In many ways, it's an html coding guide reinvented for the MySpace generation.  This is a whole 'nother market to tap: the huge number of MySpace users who are struggling with html coding.\n\nMyGirlySpace\nThe seventh most popular site aims to build \"the largest selection of Myspace Layouts, Myspace Codes, Myspace Cursors, and Myspace Graphics for girls\".  Like most of these services, MyGirlySpace is an odd mishmash of many different add-ons, with some celebrity gossip thrown in just for fun.  Additions include scrolling text, Flash animations, a CD cover generator and a selection of \"MySpace cursors\". They also link to partner sites and affiliates fairly heavily, making it hard to tell what's an affiliate link and what isn't.\n\nFreeFlashToys\nAt number eight is FreeFlashToys - and judging by the design, they're still partying like it's 1999.  The service provides Flash \"toys\" like away messages, lava lamps and comment graphics.  They also supply a large number of \"trains\" - I wasn't able to dig too deeply into these, but they seem to be a way to add masses of friends to your MySpace profile very quickly.  \nFreeFlashToys also has a cunning MySpace-specific affiliate scheme: if you put a \"FreeFlashToys promoter\" button on your MySpace page, the site will count the number of visitors you refer.  The top referrers get featured on FreeFlashToys, presumably earning them more attention and friend requests.  This is a really interesting trend: MySpacers will happily advertise your product for free if you can help them gain more friends.  Does this have any consequences for sites like MyPickList, which is offering cash in exchange for product promotion?  Definitely something to think about.  \n\nMemegen\nAt number nine is Memegen, one of the leading providers of quizzes for MySpace and LiveJournal.  The crucial point here is that Memegen is not generating most of these quizzes - instead, it provides the tools for users to create their own custom quizzes and share them with other others.  To put it another way, Memegen does virtually no work and yet is one of the leading providers of content to MySpace.  In common with Blogthings, users answer a series of questions on a certain topic that supposedly reveal something about that person's personality.  \n\nBlinkYou\nNot to be confused with RockYou, the MySpace slideshow creator, BlinkYou provides MySpace layouts, glitter images, \"online now\" icons, a doll maker, cursors, backgrounds and more for MySpace users.  There's also a fairly clunky MySpace Layout Generator that provides a live preview while you're customizing your page.  But unlike the others, BlinkYou feels like an old-style forum: visitors can leave messages in the shoutbox and there's a constantly-updated display of how many users are currently on the site.  At the time of writing, that figure is 1153 - another reminder that MySpace layouts are an absolutely huge market.  What's more, the site reports 327,435,448 hits.  Yowsers.\n\nSummary\nMySpace layouts and so-called \"MySpace codes\" are a huge, huge market - perhaps even bigger than the market for MySpace widgets.  What's more, I doubt this is a winner-takes-all game - there's a huge long tail of sites providing friend adders, virtual pets and many more MySpace additions.  However, it should also be noted that many (probably most) of these sites are full of scams, spam and adware (see MySpace Codes Bring Adware Payload).  As a result, Googling \"MySpace layouts\" is probably an unwise move.\nSee also: MySpace, America's Number One.\n\nAttention MySpace Users!\nMashable's MySpace account is at myspace.com/mashable - if you're a MySpace user, feel free to add Mashable to your friends list.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/07/28/myspace-layouts-now-9th-biggest-search-term/>