MySpace once inspired a vast ecosystem of plug-in startups

Evidence

Although MySpace is now a punch line, at the time it was an enormous juggernaut that inspired countless copycat sites and a huge secondary market of startups that only built plug-ins and “codes” for MySpace. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 883

Categorization

• XREF: Pre-echoes the kind of platform-economy ecosystem dynamics later documented around Facebook apps and TikTok. — connects to: Early online community building deliberately harnessed entrepreneurial startup culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 132
• SHARE: For someone into platform history: MySpace had a whole startup economy of profile-decoration ‘codes’ before apps existed.