Broadband Advisor

MySpace announced on Monday that developers can now build MySpace applications using Silverlight, Microsoft's plug-in for developing multimedia and rich Internet applications.

The companies also said that a MySpace application for Windows Mobile that uses Silverlight will be released in a few months.

Microsoft and MySpace have released code that will help developers build OpenSocial applications using Silverlight that run on MySpace's Open Platform.

OpenSocial is a platform for developing applications for social-networking sites and is supported by MySpace, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Friendster and others.

Previously, Silverlight has not been officially supported by MySpace.

Developers who built MySpace applications using Silverlight had their apps denied for requiring users to download additional software to run the application. Silverlight requires users to download a player in order to run applications that use the technology.

MySpace also said that it will release an application for Windows Mobile in a few months and that application will also use Silverlight. While MySpace applications already exist for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm and Nokia devices, the Windows Mobile platform has been left out.

MySpace said it will also release an application for the forthcoming Windows Mobile 6.5, an update to the operating system expected to come in the second half of this year. In addition, LG, which recently announced that it would launch 50 Windows Mobile phones in the next four years, said that it will preload the MySpace application onto those phones.

The companies didn't describe much about the new mobile application, saying only that it will deliver rich content and data and will integrate MySpace's main social features and functionality into the Windows Mobile operating system.

They plan to offer more details about it and about developing Silverlight applications for MySpace during a session at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas this week.

Microsoft announced last year that Nokia would be the first device maker to use Silverlight on mobile phones. Early last year Microsoft also announced that it was working on supporting Flash, Adobe's multimedia run time that is the predominant application for building multimedia Internet applications.