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"It seems that after the latest MySpace hack at the weekend, the company is asking all users to upgrade to Flash 9.  In fact, anyone who wishes to view content on MySpace Video will be forced to update.  But this new version creates a problem for those who are feeding the MySpace beast - Flash 9 gives site owners the option to disable links to external sites, and MySpace has chosen to do this.  In a related move, they've also tightened up the restrictions around posting Flash embeds in comments: users now have to approve the widgets left by other members, and the default is to disallow them.\nYou can still distribute MySpace widgets, but if your widget includes a link back to your site, it will be disabled for Flash 9 users.   Technically speaking, they're inserting allowNetworking=\u201Dinternal\u201D into the Flash embeds.  Marshall Kirkpatrick wonders if this will threaten the viral distribution of widgets, since you can't include a \"get this widget\" button within the Flash embed itself.  I'm not so sure.\nIt seems there may be some workarounds - as far as I can see, you can still include a plain html link outside of the embed.  The vast majority of MySpace users will copy and paste the entire code, so the link is maintained.  This is probably the simplest solution for now.  You can also still link to pages within MySpace.  In the worst case scenario, widget makers could create their own MySpace page (Branding 2.0) and point all their widgets back to it.\n\nNonetheless, I think this is a sloppy move by MySpace.  This is the equivalent of eBay suddenly breaking the thousands 3rd party tools that plug into it, without even notifying the developers.  With companies like Slide, Photobucket and RockYou investing millions of dollars into the MySpace economy, it's time that MySpace realized it's now a platform.  \nIn fact, the list of widgets that plug into social networks is getting longer by the day: Supcast, Skinnyr, MyPickList,  SitePal, Kiko Events, Slideroll, ProjectOpus, Frappr, Bunchball, YourSpins, NooZ, Abazab, Umundo, Mojungle and Hellodeo are just some of the services that rely on widget-based marketing.  And that list doesn't include the hundreds of video-sharing sites that distribute so-called \"MySpace codes\" - Google Video, Grouper, Metacafe and Veoh, to name but a few.  It's true that these moves were made hastily in response to the hack, but there should at least be a way to notify developers and suggest workarounds.  \nAnd if MySpace sees this move as beneficial to their business (making life difficult for YouTube, gaining more control over the ads on their site), they're badly misguided - if they continue to act this way, tool makers will just move over to hi5, Piczo, Xanga, Blogger, Multiply, Tagworld, Windows Live Spaces and the hundreds of other platforms that support 3rd party widgets.  It's just unfortunate that such an unprofessional company owns most of the widget market.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/07/21/myspace-update-threatens-youtube-rockyou-and-hundreds-more/>