MySpace Built on .Net

In my Microsoft ♥ Yahoo piece on Saturday, I wrote:

When was the last time you saw a new hit web site developed using Microsoft’s web stack?

A slew of readers wrote in to point out that MySpace now runs on .Net. It was originally written using ColdFusion (!) and was ported over to .Net last year.

According to this post from Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie, MySpace does 1.5 billion page views a day. That’s impressive. But it still doesn’t count as a hit new site developed using Microsoft’s web stack — clearly their switch to .Net was a success, but it happened after they became a billion-dollar subsidiary of News Corp.

My point isn’t really whether Microsoft’s web development kit is good or bad, but simply that all of the grassroots-level developer enthusiasm is for open source tools (and Flash).

★ Tuesday, 8 May 2007