IPCentral occasionally writes about esoterica such as interoperability and platform companies, usually in the context of software and the Microsoft wars.

But the questions won't stay caged. The latest brouhaha is that the CEO of News Corp ruminated about the relationship of News Corp's MySpace to other Web 2.0 services:

“If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” Chernin said at the conference. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”

While Chernin said MySpace’s video efforts are small at the moment, that could change. He estimated that 60%-70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from MySpace.

Naturally, those who regard free riding as a basic human right are outraged -- viz, Good Morning, Silicon Valley and Tech Crunch.

The critics conflate two different issues, though. The question whether MySpace would be wise to integrate the ancillary aps into its in-house system is one issue; if it did so, it might well find that the ap providers established their own platforms that competed with My Space, and that it had made a mistake. But this issue is totally different from the question whether News Corp has some obligation to avoid competing with the add-ons. In the end, platforms must be paid for, and if the add-ons do not help with support then their claim on the platform provider is nil.

If the platform provider charges directly for access, of course (the Microsoft Windows model), then the add-ons add value that make the platform more valuable and the platform provider has strong incentives to nurture them. Without a revenue model, though, or with a revenue model that throws platform and aps into competition in selling eyeballs to advertisers, it is hard for such symbiosis to develop.