Sprint to offer MySpace Mobile for free

MySpace, Fox Sports, IGN added to Sprint Vision deck

MySpace’s isolation on the Helio and AT&T content decks has come to an end. Today Sprint announced it would include MySpace’s WAP site in the Sprint Vision portal along with News Corp.’s other mobile-enabled Web properties, Fox Sports and IGN.

MySpace’s pervasive social networking site has been one of the hottest properties of the Internet, though lately its dominance has been challenged by rival social site Facebook. It had moved cautiously from the familiar territory of the wired Web to the mobile Internet. Last year, MySpace mobile went live over MVNO Helio’s mobile content platform, using Sprint’s EV-DO network and its high-end handsets to run a highly interactive Java platform that maps to MySpace’s core profile functions. Last December, MySpace signed a similar deal with AT&T, using a UIEvolution-designed Java portal to extend MySpace services to its millions of customers for a $3 a month fee.

The new free WAP site, however, is much more basic than the AT&T and Helio apps, using the phone’s native browser to render scaled-down versions of MySpace’s usually feature-rich pages. MySpace members can perform basic functions like view profiles, messages and comments as well as approve friend requests and change their online status, but they cannot upload photos and videos or access any of the embedded applications or customization that makes the site so popular. Anyone can access the site by entering the MySpace.com address into their phone browsers, but a coveted slot on the Sprint Vision deck will likely drive much more traffic to the site. Other operators are likely to follow in Sprint’s footsteps.

MySpace announced the launch of its content on the mobile browser in September at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment, though MySpace expects to reserve the big guns for next year when it will launch a much more functional and fully ad-supported site across all carrier decks, which is when Sprint is expected to begin linking to the site.

Facebook, however, has already beaten MySpace to the punch. It runs its own WAP site and SMS/MMS service, which offer more functionality than MySpace’s mobile portal, though it doesn’t offer the more-rich application interfaces through the mobile browser. At the same CTIA show that MySpace announced its plans to follow Facebook into the mobile browser, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz announced plans for Facebook to follow MySpace into the dedicated application space. It signed a deal with Research in Motion to create a dedicated BlackBerry application that allows users to access some of Facebook’s more advanced features.