Sunil Urs

Yesterday TechCrunch reported Microsoft’s highly anticipated WorldWide Telescope which can be used by astronomers and non-astronomers alike to explore the heavens with a desktop client akin to Google Earth.

But after reading TechCrunch for years I’ve got into a habit of thinking hard on how can the mentioned software monetize on its efforts by giving it away for free to the mass. Yesterday I did the same with Microsoft’s new product. Of course Microsoft WorldWide Telescope is really a very good product which will help millions of astronomy enthusiasts like me to gain access to such a huge data. But when I started thinking on monetization, this what I pictured in my mind.

As one start exploring….

This is how I visualized. I know my idea is weird. There may be several other ways of monetization. This is just one way.  Microsoft will show you other ways of monetization. Keep watchin!…

Today MySpace has announced their “Data Availability” initiative along with data sharing partnership with Yahoo, EBay, Twitter and Photobucket. Here the key goal is to allow users to use their personal data on other networks and applications. As a simple example, one can display his MySpace profile on other networks. I will be very happy if I can change my profile info on MySpace and it gets automatically updated on LinkedIn, Orkut, Facebook, etc… Though it is not possible currently, it may happen in near future.

They are calling it as “Data Availability” rather than “Data Portability”. And it makes more sense as the third parties are held to strict terms of service, which prohibits them from storing / using the data once the permissions are revoked. So the data is dynamic. You fetch the data when ever it is required, use it and forget it.

It can lead to interesting applications

When it comes to the application, MySpace’s partnership with EBay can lead to some interesting features on EBay wherein once people buy a product on EBay, they can spread the word to all their friends, tell them what they feel about the product, then recommend the product to others. This will allow products to spread virally. Hmmm… Social Shopping!!.. Though this is not completely new, partnership between MySpace and EBay is going to be an interesting thing. MySpace can meet its revenue targets with this initiative. Currently as the Data Sharing is only between the partners, even EBay will be happy to pay them for this exclusivity.

As Michael Arrington says, MySpace has got a clear lead over Facebook this time.