According to MySpace, it will give away $50, 000 worth of prizes for developing new and innovative application, which will be run in the website’s programming interface.

The deadline for submission will be on February 24.

Winners in each of the five categories will take home more than $10, 000. The categories include: Best New MySpace Application, Most Innovative (Use of real-time streaming), Best Open Search API, Best Photo Upload API, and Best Mobile API.

Qualified applicants should be a legal US, UK, Canadian (expect Quebec), and Australian resident. They should also be at least 18 years old to be eligible to join the contests.

Likewise, MySpace said that participants can join the contest as individual or a group with a maximum of three members.

Also, the social networking website said that the panel of judges will include MySpace COO Mike Jones, Google Engineering Director David Glazer, and other distinguished personalities in the social networking arena.

The evaluation for each entry will fall into four criteria including originality, entertainment factor, technical achievement, and innovation.

Winners will be announced at the Game Developers’ Conference, which will be held in San Francisco, California in March.

To start up ideas for the developers, MySpace said that it will be hosting a free event called the MySpace devJam this coming January 14 in its San Francisco office.

In a statement, MySpace said that the idea for the contest stemmed from its decision a month ago to open the social networking websites’ public activity stream data to outside developers through a new set of APIs.

With more than 110 million active members worldwide, MySpace hopes to better its standing in the online world with the contest.

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