MySpace expands in Seattle

MySpace, which operates the largest social network with 110 million unique visitors per month, plans to significantly expand its presence in downtown Seattle after opening a development center last year.

MySpace, with 60 local employees, plans to double its Seattle work force in the next 12 months after making the city the first remote development office for the Beverly Hills, Calif., company. MySpace also has facilities in San Francisco, London, Korea and Australia.

"We chose Seattle because it is a hotbed for innovation and disruptive ideas," said MySpace Chief Technology Officer Aber Whitcomb, adding that it served as a blueprint for its decentralized technology efforts. "It was a natural next step for our strategy of opening offices around the world."

MySpace employs about 1,200, including 480 in the development/engineering group. Seattle has been one of the fastest-growing offices for the company. The Seattle area is an adopted home of tech giants Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc., which have established branch offices.

MySpace chose downtown over the suburbs because Whitcomb said the company wanted to attract developers who were "tired of going to the Eastside."

Whitcomb and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe hail from the Pacific Northwest, Whitcomb coming from Bellingham and DeWolfe from Portland. And they both attended the University of Washington, an institution they routinely tap for software development talent.

In the Seattle office, Whitcomb said developers work on core parts of the social networking offering -- ranging from messaging to sign up. They also have been instrumental in creating the MySpace Developer Platform, which allows third parties to create applications for the larger community.

That offering -- similar to Facebook's open platform initiative -- was turned on for the larger MySpace community Thursday. That means MySpace users will be able to turn on the new applications and share them with friends.

Though Facebook has attracted plenty of attention for its open platform, Whitcomb doesn't believe that MySpace is lagging behind.

"Really, people have been developing on MySpace since the beginning. This is just a natural extension and we are formalizing the process by explaining to developers what is available to them and what isn't," he said.

To promote the new offering, MySpace is hosting an invite-only party called DevJam at its offices Saturday. The idea is to recruit Seattle developers who may want to develop applications on the social network.