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MySpace, once the pinnacle of social networking advancement is far from the entity it once was, though at its peak it had only a fraction of Facebook's insane user base. Still, its current owners, like those of the newly revamped DIGG, are hoping to draw back a few of the older users and some new ones, with a fresh look and a continued focus on music.
While it's not live yet, the new look was showcased in a video that shows a – surprisingly – very clean and innovative looking site. It has features you'll recognise, similar to those found on Facebook and other social networks, but it's certainly got a fresher look than pretty much all of them.
There's status updates and a focus on images and sharing of media – perhaps more so than the other big competitors at the moment – while incorporating what looks like much more detailed and graphically represented statistics for fans of certain things. The given example is Justin Timberlake (a part owner of the site), who is given access to a specific group of most dedicated fans, allowing him to share information with them that isn't available to other followers.
At the base of each page there appears to be a music player, suggesting that users will have a continues musical experience moving around the site. While it might seem like services like Spotify have more than passed MySpace by, the once popular site still features a library of over 40 million tracks, almost three times that of Spotify's own collection.
You can signup for news of the site revamp at new.myspace.com
KitGuru Says: So what about it KG members? Does MySpace have a hope of ever returning to its once dominant status? Perhaps it will become something else entirely that is less suceptible to the ebb and flow of popularity that seems to surround social networking.
Windows 8 meets facebook?
Back in ’07/early ’08 when facebook was really starting to motor and the writing was on the wall, I was pitching the idea to a few people that Myspace should be rebranded iSpace, drop the social networking side altogether and reestablish themselves purely as a central hub for musicians, filmmakers, photographers, designers etc., to demonstrate their wares. I still occasionally annoy people with the idea over drinks, but everyone tells me it’s a dead horse.
It seemed back then that Youtube was for the amateurs with bootlegs and films of squirrels on skateboards (still is), Flickr was stalling (ditto), facebook was lousy at handling photos and media (improved, but not a lot), Deviant Art was too niche (tick), the budding portfolio sites like Carbonmade were far too limited (tick), and that there was a huge market for a strong multi-media platform based on a uniform, tile-based template.
My analogy was that artists etc. usually can’t be bothered to build their own performance and exhibition spaces, but if you build a huge ‘Holiday Inn’ where everything starts in the same place in each room, then hand the keys over to thousands of artists, you get the world’s largest gallery in which every visitor instantly knows their way around.
Imagine my delight/surprise/hang-on-a-second… when a mate currently charged with helping to overhaul youtube sent me this video a few weeks ago. “Isn’t that what we talked about…?” True, It’s taken them a while and Spotify and Vimeo have arisen, so it’s a harder fight now, but if they get it right it could work. I think they need to get the still-image integration right and I’m not convinced they have, and there’ll be fighting on all fronts, but they have a couple of years yet before youtube reinvents, so it has a chance. I hope it works, but I still think they should have thrown some money at iSpace.com for the domain – ‘My’ Space is so Windows XP…