#FF00AA

I’m very, very interested in Wallop: it’s MySpace done right — or, actually, looking right. (And whether looking too good is an advantage or a drawback in the social networking business is up for debate.) How do they achieve it? Simply by making the whole pages in Flash instead of HTML, so you get pixel-perfect positioning across all browsers (except those that don’t have Flash, but I’m pretty sure you can’t browse MySpace on your smartphone, either, or it’ll choke on the nested tables and 5MB backgrounds and whatnot), with extreme customizability as simple as drag-and-dropping stuff around your profile. The screenshots look great (it’s in semi-closed beta for now).

And they have a peculiar business model, too: they’re not charging you for using the system, and they’re not putting up ads; they’ll only be selling you additional decorations and Flash widgets — and, since user-generated content is all the rage now, most of those add-ons will be provided by any web developer who wants to sell Flash stuff on the network, with Wallop taking a cut of the profits. Just like on Second Life or There (does anyone still use that one?), only in 2D.

It’s a sound business model in theory: people do like to buy MSN smileys or phone ringtones to… express how cool they are, or something, I don’t know, I don’t get it. With two caveats: first, Wallop is (currently?) closed to minors, who are the prime target for such offerings; second, isn’t that kind of merchandising more appropriately tacked onto an existing, successful product? MSN or Second Life weren’t launched on the promise that you could buy additional user-generated content; those economies stemmed from the existence of a user base, and not the other way around. Can you really lure users by announcing that you’ll milk every penny out of them when they want to customize their homepage?

Still, it may work. And I’m certainly rooting for it — anything to undermine the atrocity that is MySpace (I finally subscribed last Friday… and still feel so uncomfortable in there that I couldn’t bring myself to befriending, or whatever it’s called, the people I know who are already in there). But it’s interesting that even MySpace, which certainly sees the potential in such a concept, hasn’t gone that way so far: are they preparing similar stuff in secret (that would explain why they’re making it so hard to customize their pages), or are they weary of aggravating their user base by asking them for money? Once people have tasted free-as-in-beer, it’s hard to step back — and that’s also true for competitors who want to enter the market.

Okay, between this post and my bragging about being the webmaster of a social site myself in my beta application email, I’m not quite confident I’ll get an invitation from them, despite my hundreds of thousands of millions of readers. So, if any reader’s got invitations to hand out, do think of me.