Well, not quite.

But, as Mike Arrington reports, some big, big news brewing out of MySpace today. Turns out they’ve suddenly switched off their user’s profile’s access to Photobucket, one of the largest (if not *the* largest) free photo and video storage services on the net. According to an email that was published through Mike, and is echoed on the Photobucket blog, Photobucket gets in the order of 50,000 video uploads *per day*.

Is this a surprise?

Well, it shouldn’t be. Way back when YouTube was purchased by Google, a senior executive with Fox (it may have even been Murdoch himself) was heard to say something to the effect that there was no reason why MySpace couldn’t start competing in the online video arena, because of its huge installed base of users. Or, even other online services.

There’s no official reason why Photobucket has been cut off. There might be a legitimate one, or not. But I think it just goes to show that Rupert Murdoch means Business when it comes to MySpace, and furthermore, isn’t afraid to show that MySpace doesn’t need any external widgets polluting its pool of users with “choices” and the like.

Photobucket’s CEO is asking that its users vote with their feet, or perhaps their keyboards. Ultimately, I think that the next move is really MySpace’s. Once people start acruing the benefits of network effects in a social network, its a double eged sword which has the effect of locking them into the same network. It only makes sense to move if *everyone* moves.

If MySpace has an alternate video storage and management product cooking — which only has to be *just* has good — it will have no problem locking in its users. They’d have to deal with a whole lot of them being cheesed off because all the time that was spent uploading their videos to another service had been lost; but I’m sure there’s lots they could do to sweeten the pot in the meantime.

And if MySpace *does* have an alternate to Photobucket, the next logical question is “what else do they have cooking?” There’s been a spate of news around widgets which cross blogs and social networks. But if MySpace (and other networks) starts developing their own in-house widgets, it might signal a larger trend towards creating truly closed-in systems; ultimately, this would benefit MySpace in a huge way — not only preventing people from leaving MySpace (because it continues to add functionality to itself) — but also increasing the height of those metaphorical walls which separate its users from marketers who are salivating at the chance to get at this demographic. Higher walls (to flog the metaphor) can only mean steeper tolls to get access to MySpace’s users.

Which in turn means a more profitable bottom line for Fox.

The ball’s in Rupert’s corner with this one. Will it turn into a public relations disaster, or a shrewd tactical maneuver that makes social widgets virtually obselete? Time will tell … and do so very, very soon.