The New Myspace Has Arrived: "Not a Social Network", but an Entertainment Hub
Mike IsaacForbes Staff
Contributor Group
With today's relaunch and complete overhaul of News Corp's Myspace, Rupert Murdoch's little social network is all grown up.
Or so says the company's CEO, Mike Jones.
"We want to become the leading social entertainment destination," Jones said in an interview with Forbes, "connecting users to content that defines different entertainment tastes. We're not a social network."
Which sounds confusing, since Myspace seems to have been as much for the last 7+ years. Instead, the relaunch features a complete user interface redesign and product reorientation, "primarily refocusing the user on the content," says Jones.
The company takes on a sort of multi-pronged strategy, beginning with the new welcome page:
The entire aesthetic has been revamped, with far fewer fonts and a less-busy color palette. "The monochromatic choices allows for room to breathe," said Myspace VP of Product Mike Macadaan in an interview with Forbes. Macadaan also spoke at the Warm Gun design conference earlier this month in San Francisco, where he rolled out the first of the company's new changes in the new open-bracket logo.
Users can switch between different modes of viewing the content in a redesigned home page, choosing either a list, grid or 'player' view. Content that is trending site-wide is viewable using the "right-now" feature, which lets the user see what is being uploaded to the site at the moment (music, videos, etc). The "discovery" and "my stuff" tabs act as a kind of dashboard anchored to the top of the home page, giving the user access to all of his or her own uploaded content.
In a Foursquare-esque move, reputation is now a focal point, with badges and recognition awarded to those users generating the most content around a topic.
As far as topics are concerned, the site now hosts "Topics Pages," over "20,000 dynamic ones that change as fans discuss and add new content," according to the press briefing. The topics pages serve as central content hubs, aggregating all of the new input from the user base. Topics are "followable" like a Myspace "friend" would be (how Twitter-ish).
From what I've seen, the new look is definitely an upgrade for what was once an eyesore of an experience. Macadaan's product and design talent shows through in the streamlined, stripped-down feel. What I've hinted at thus far in some of my comments has been the likeness to features from other social media sites - Foursquare's recognition, Twitter's trending and following, Facebook-ish topics 'Pages.' It's as if Myspace plucked the best attributes from all of the existing sites out there now and curated them as their own content in the site's revamp.Which is to say, not a bad idea. Reinventing the wheel this late in the game could be riskier than it's worth.
Jones says the relaunch is rolling out in beta at 12:00 am PST on Wednesday October 26th to groups of users, and will be available worldwide in November. Myspace also launches the mobile platform in mid-November, accessible from any mobile browser, as well as an iPhone and Android app to follow later in the year.
I cover all things social media for Forbes' Technology bureau in San Francisco, as well as tech-related industrial and graphic design trends. In the past, I've written on…
I cover all things social media for Forbes' Technology bureau in San Francisco, as well as tech-related industrial and graphic design trends. In the past, I've written on politics and entertainment for The Washington Examiner in D.C., as well as music and culture for Atlanta's Paste Magazine. My degree is in English Literature from the University of California Berkeley, with an emphasis in Modernism/Post-Modernism, and a minor in snarkiness. I also have sleeping problems. Always accepting tips at misaac AT forbes dot com.