MySpace Revamps Site To Recapture the Magic

Ponca City writes "MySpace has unveiled an overhauled website and logo as it attempts to recapture the magic that led it to top the social-networking sphere. According to the report 'MySpace is positioning itself for the so-called Gen Y crowd, or those roughly between 10 and 30 years old.' A beta version of the new website will start rolling out Wednesday and is slated to be accessible to users globally by the end of November. Plans are for the site to focus on entertainment with the home page constantly updating items about music, movies and television shows that are most discussed on the site at any one time."

Comments

Name fail

[sapgau]

My (blank) ???

Re:Name fail

[cayenne8]

Wait...between age 10-30, you're Generation "Y".

What age group range is Generation "X"?

Where is the cutoff for boomers age-wise?

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought boomers were fat, not old!

Re:Name fail

[operagost]

Last time I checked, Gen X was composed of those born between 1962 and 1980. If you have a Journey song on your MP3 player that's not "Don't Stop Believin'", you're probably Gen X.

Re:Name fail

[Trepidity]

Gen X is roughly people who're now 30-50. Varies a bit, can include people in their late 20s, maybe some early 50s. Maybe doesn't include late 40s.

The literal post-war "baby boom" of 1945-1950 would be people now 60-65. It's used more broadly to include some people born later, though, but not much later than, say, the late 1950s. If you think of boomer culture involving things like anti-Vietnam protests, the Beatles, hippiedom, etc., that has to be people who were at least, say, teenagers by 1970.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

score 0? am I the only one who gets this joke??

Re:Name fail

[KillaGouge]

Does "Wheel in the Sky" from the new album count?

Re:Name fail

[Monkeedude1212]

Any way you want it thats the way you need it any way you want it bowdowdowdowdowdowdowdoodoo

Oh hey, sorry, was just playing Rock Band 2, whats up?

Re:Name fail

[Infonaut]

Dude, it's painful to me that you used Journey as an example. In my darker moments I still have flashbacks to the feathered Steve Perry hair and horrible lyrics like, "The smell of wine and cheap perfume... ." Now I feel a bit ill.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Well fuck, I was born in '87 and I have four*. Should I be worried?

* IIRC: Who's Crying Now, Separate Ways, Wheel in the Sky, & Any Way You Want It.

Re:Name fail

[owlnation]

Seems to my Gen X mindset, that there's a big difference between the Gen X-ers that are under 35, they seem more Gen Y -- similarly, there's an HUGE difference between the Gen Y-ers aged 35 - 20 and those under 20.

Those under 20 are more like Generation Z.

From a Gen X point of view, Gen Z are terrifying -- God help us all when they are in charge of something important. It seems that Gen X has become terrible parents.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that, what about those of us in the middle? On the one hand, I have no idea what Journey is, on the other, I'd cut your hand off for using anything Apple and murder you for mentioning Facebook. Hm. So I'm ignorant and violent. OMG, I might be an Usian!!!!111!!1

But srsly, I don't fit into the Gen-Y mold (if there's such a thing), despite not being over 30. Yet. But soon that motherfucker comes. Ugh.

Re:Name fail

[dgatwood]

Agreed. There's definitely a transition period, depending in large part on when people first got computers. For people like me, at 33, we're more like the generation that contains the twenty-somethings. For the ones who didn't get computers until high school or college, they're more like Gen X. That said, I don't think I know anybody my age who doesn't fit better with the younger crowd. By the time you get to people who are about 37 or so, you're well into the Gen X territory.

That said, I readily admit that I don't get the whole text messaging thing. It's not that I can't parse it---it's just a subtle variation on the dialect we used to use on 1200 baud BBSes in the 80s. I just don't get why anybody would willingly pay money to use it when it costs more for a few hundred bytes than for a few minutes of talk time.... I also don't get why so many young people seem to think ROFL, LOL, etc. are new.... Kids today....

Re:Name fail

[skuzzlebutt]

Just picture it sung by a Korean kid, and you become hip again!

YMMV

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 30 and I agree totally. My brother is 6 years older than me and he and his friends are clearly "Gen-X" .He and his friends just have a different mindset... plus I never got to see Grateful Dead.

Re:Name fail

[hedwards]

It's kind of annoying that previously there wasn't a lot of question that somebody that was born in 1980 was Gen X. And now all of a sudden journalists have changed their minds.

Mapping generation boundaries is tricky business and there isn't really an absolute. But if you were born during the Carter administration, when your parents were expecting to get you a small pox vaccination, I think that's gen X.

So much of what folks cite as Gen Y life experience just doesn't apply until you were born in at least 1982 or so.

Re:Name fail

[pseudofrog]

And can we use one of the alternatives to "Generation Y", like the "Millenial Generation" or the "Net Generation"?

All Generation Y says is "the one that came after Generation X".

Re:Name fail

[MBGMorden]

Not sure. At 29 I fall into the 10-30 range, but every previous definition I'd heard put me into Gen-X territory. Also heard it called "Nintendo Generation" a few times. Of course a roommate of mine who was once completely "anti-videogame" took EXTREME offense to that and swore (to the point of getting flustered) that he was NOT a member of "nintendo generation". Explanations that it just referred to an age range and not a hobby fell on deaf ears. He was of the video games are "uncool" variety - strangely enough when he emailed me recently to get back in touch he forwarded me a 360 gamer-tag as a means of contact :S.

Re:Name fail

[kenj0418]

I even played the Journey arcade game. I guess that makes me really old.... now get off my lawn.

Re:Name fail

[Keen Anthony]

In retrospect though, how many brilliant lyricists have existed in rock music? Elvis's music was ripe with horrible lyrics. I still think The Beatles' talent lay mostly in their music and not in their lyrics. Just to make a disclaimer, here are some musicians I feel are/were brilliant lyricists and songwriters: Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Steve Harris (Iron Maiden), Stan Ridgway (Wall of Voodoo), Andy Prieboy (Wall of Voodoo), Ronnie James Dio (Dio, Black Sabbath, Elf, Rainbow), Russ Ballard (Argent), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Neil Peart (Rush), Bernie Taupin (Elton John), John Cougar Mellancamp, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Sting (The Police), Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Tom Waits, etc.

Steve Perry's lyrics weren't really that bad. No more offensive than those of Survivor (still a guilty pleasure of mine). And all the guys I named could really come up with some cliched lyrics too. :D It's all in good fun though!

Re:Name fail

[Keen Anthony]

I live by a simple rule. If you met your significant other online using a bulletin that you either dialed or telneted into, you are definitely a Gen Xer. If you met them on a web forum, you might be a Gen Yer. If you met them on a mobile phone or game console based social net, you are definitely a Gen Zer, and legally I'm not allowed to touch you.

Does this rule work in every case? No. I never said it was a good rule.

I like texting. I never thought I would, but I like the instant connection to my girlfriend that I have when we can't always speak on the phone. I just wish text messaging gave me as many characters as Citadel did in an Xpress message.

Re:Name fail

[paedobear]

Well, I'm 31 and my family who are even 3 years younger than me have a totally different mindset - further away from mine than my aunt who is 13 years older (This is especially true for the relatives who were born from the late 80s on.) The plural of anecdote is not "data" after all.

Re:Name fail

[julesh]

Last time I checked, Gen X was composed of those born between 1962 and 1980. If you have a Journey song on your MP3 player that's not "Don't Stop Believin'", you're probably Gen X.

Hmm. I don't. But I have two Toto tracks that aren't Rosanna. Does that count?

Re:Name fail

[julesh]

Well fuck, I was born in '87 and I have four*. Should I be worried?

Depends. Were you intentionally being retro when you put them on there?

Re:Name fail

[tehcyder]

That said, I readily admit that I don't get the whole text messaging thing. It's not that I can't parse it---it's just a subtle variation on the dialect we used to use on 1200 baud BBSes in the 80s. I just don't get why anybody would willingly pay money to use it when it costs more for a few hundred bytes than for a few minutes of talk time.... I also don't get why so many young people seem to think ROFL, LOL, etc. are new.... Kids today....

In most countries (except the US apparently) texts are free to receive and very cheap to send, which is precisely why they are so popular with relatively cash-strapped teenagers/schoolkids.

Re:Name fail

[markhb]

Hell, I prefer "Baby Busters" to "Generation X". The X thing never made much sense to me. (Also, AFAIK the official end of the Baby Boom generation in terms of the tail end of the birth rate bubble was 1964, so 1965 and later is the Baby Bust or Gen X.)

As to when it ended, I think that if you don't clearly remember where you were when the Challenger exploded, you're too young for Gen X.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

and where the fuck is Frank Zappa in your list?

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I actually think they are some of the best songs ever put to disc.

I did get dropped on the head once though, so maybe that explains it.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I resemble that remark.

Re:Name fail

[Anonymous Coward]

My (blank) ???

Thank you -- I can't believe how few people have commented on that horrible new logo!

Re:Name fail

[Keen Anthony]

Only left him out cause the list was running long, but yeah, good call.

Re:Name fail

[operagost]

I was going to use Styx or Poison, but I didn't want to be banned from Slashdot.

umm yea

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha

What?

[shougyin]

People still use that site?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. That's the problem they're trying to address.

Re:What?

[justin12345]

Funny coincidence, last night I got an entire email inbox full of friend requests from spam bots. About 7 before my spam filter auto-blacklisted MySpace. I was impressed, its been years since I got one of those (or logged into MySpace). So if by people you mean robots then evidently yes, "people" still use MySpace.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Far too crowded.

Too late.

[Winckle]

As soon as Murdoch bought the site it tanked completely. Now obviously those two things aren't entirely connected. I can still be happy about it though. :)

Also worth seeing:

Re:Too late.

[pspahn]

And according to that chart, myspace still has some users in Malaysia. But unfortunately, I don't have a joke to follow up on that observation.

Re:Too late.

[DragonWriter]

As soon as Murdoch bought the site it tanked completely. Now obviously those two things aren't entirely connected.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were entirely connected, though with perhaps the reverse of the causal relationship some people might assume.

After all, if you think you've driven your product to the maximum market value its ever going to have, its obviously a good time to sell; if you think you can cost-effectively make it worth more on the market before selling it, it makes sense to sell it.

Re:Too late.

[melikamp]

I wonder which magic they are gonna recapture. This one? Or this?

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

For a demo of the new site, go here.

Well, it's not as bad as it used to be.

Re:Too late.

[Bertie]

I know someone who works there, and he tells me that when it was bought out, that Tom guy was very resistant to making the sort of changes to the site that anybody could see were needed. So it limped on with its awful mess of a Coldfusion codebase and no attempt to give it the sort of stickiness that saw Facebook skyrocket.

It's too late now. They've had their five years in the sun which any site like this can expect to have. It's just another graveyard like Geocities now. And honestly, did anybody expect anything else?

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

And according to that chart, myspace still has some users in Malaysia. But unfortunately, I don't have a joke to follow up on that observation.

They're on fire in Malaysia?

Re:Too late.

[blair1q]

As soon as Murdoch bought the site it tanked completely. Now obviously those two things aren't entirely connected.

Yes they are.

That's the day I stopped logging in.

Re:Too late.

[falsified]

Wow, I totally forgot about Google Trends for some reason.

Were any other Americans surprised how few people in other countries went on Facebook compared to the US?

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

I figured it was kind of US-centric, but not to this extent.

Re:Too late.

[whiteboy86]

Owners just sold it when the site peaked in popularity and the threat of Facebook loomed.

Re:Too late.

[countSudoku()]

That's so great. I think the ONLY thing that can save this dead site is the ability to post and share music, movies and television shows. Of course, they and the MPAA and RIAA could never come to grips with that, not for free which it would need to be. Even though it would generate shitloads of real traffic and sales through the roof for the bands willing to be involved with freely shared music and other medias. That'll never happen. Hey, I'm sharing anyway. Make me want to join, or expect defeat.

Re:Too late.

[Frosty Piss]

MySpace Revamps Site To Recapture the Magic

Recapture the MAGIC? Does it involve PINK PONIES?

Re:Too late.

[rudy_wayne]

I know someone who works there, and he tells me that when it was bought out, that Tom guy was very resistant to making the sort of changes to the site that anybody could see were needed.

It wouldn't have mattered. My Space, Facebook and all the rest are fads. They come and go. Once your 15 minutes of fame are up, that's it, people have already moved on to the latest "new big thing".

Re:Too late.

[vlueboy]

If we take into account the prices they were charging people for hosting 100K pages with one time setup fees from your 13 year time machine, it's interesting that they took the "free" route at some point. Well, we now know the whole internet did.

As visitors became the product to ad corps and data miners, the value or cost in myspace's business model must have remained pretty similar to those rates, and someone is paying for those. A kinda lowest ballpark of how much our visits are worth to sites like facebook.

I did see take interest to the simplicity and lack of immediate apparent user-driven content back then. That has morphed to the today's pr0n-site-like content layout (first illustration in the article) and the facebook-like social layout (second illustration.) Nothing original here, purge your myspace contact info now if you still haven't

Re:Too late.

[Dogtanian]

The irony is that the first page *is* from 1996, yet doesn't feature the uber-90s/early-web non-scrolling fixed background pattern.

Whereas, after that aspect of web design had apparently died out by the millennium (because it was obviously horrid, I'd assumed), the first place I see it on a new page in years is... MySpace. Along with lots of other Geocities:The Next Generation style tackiness.

Re:Too late.

[Dogtanian]

As soon as Murdoch bought the site it tanked completely. Now obviously those two things aren't entirely connected.

Yes they are. That's the day I stopped logging in.

(Assumed implication being that you stopped using MySpace because Murdoch bought it).

I can't figure out if you're being serious here. Are you actually suggesting that you think your decision to leave for that reason is significant in the scheme of things (i.e. millions of users) or even that it reflects the reasons for everyone else leaving?

Because- much as I think Murdoch is worthless scum and understand your reasons- it's egotistical or deluded to believe that either of these is the case. Sorry to say that I doubt the vast majority of its users gave a toss about him buying MySpace per se.

Maybe he did something that caused people to leave, or maybe the seeds of its destruction were already sown by the time it had been sold. But I doubt most people left directly because they didn't like Murdoch- you're not typical.

Re:Too late.

[blair1q]

Okay. Everyone else avert your eyes while I reveal the secret clue to our friend here:

I was making a joke. "MySpace sucks because I left." See?

Alright, you can open your eyes now.

Re:Too late.

[Dahamma]

Actually, both of those pages would be an improvement over the current MySpace.

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

My proofing quality nosedived.
That last paragraph of mine was meant to compare archive.org's simplicity with today's brand new complexity on the front page. --vlueboy

Re:Too late.

[antdude]

Can Murdoch buy Facebook too? ;)

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

im pretty sure jokes have to be funny.

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which MySpace did. The writing was on the wall for them when Facebook came around; the choice came down to joining one of two social networks. One social network had no privacy controls at all and was populated by teenagers blinging out their website, the other was populated by highly educated college students and college graduates and had some privacy control and a sense in taste. Given the choice, which group would you rather connect with?

MySpace was still growing when bought out by News Corp, but they were beginning to flatline growth wise while Facebook was beginning to skyrocket. As for competing with Apple's Ping, I think the social network that will come from that will look a lot more like foursquare than Ping or MySpace.

Re:Too late.

[hedwards]

I'm guessing it's shitter. A filter of twitter which filters out anything that isn't related to the restroom. Also Jersey Shore.

Re:Too late.

[wmac]

And I see only the home page has been updated. Not even the profile pages. They want to do magic by redesigning a few pages?!!

Re:Too late.

[Voyager529]

I think facebook is a bit different than myspace in that it's EVERYWHERE. Myspace was a cool place to find people I haven't spoken to in a while, but required an actual visit to their site. Facebook has almost completely replaced personal e-mails. Both of my phones have access to every phone number of every one of my Facebook friends who post them. Facebook has SMS alerts, Outlook 2010 integration, and, though I despise them personally, Farmville and Mafia Wars. Also, it was much simpler to actually find the information you're looking for, rather than reading yellow text on a sparkly white background.

I'll bet bucks to beans that Murdoch would have laughed you out of his office by saying that Myspace should figure out indirect ways of making their service useful that wouldn't involve serving up an ad at the same time. He would have downright pissed in his pants if you told him in 2005 that in four years Myspace would be the 00's Geocities at the hands of a college kid whose alternative service did just that. Okay, now I totally want to do that now. Excuse me while I fire up my Delorean. Anyone got some Plutonium?

Re:Too late.

[totally bogus dude]

Costs for hosting have dramatically decreased, but also I think that 'myspace' bears no relation to the 'myspace' social networking site. I would say it's more a case that MySpace's founder came up with the name, discovered the domain was already registered, and offered to buy it from whoever was using it to sell business web hosting.

Quite fascinating to see, though. Thanks.

May 2000 seems to be when they started offering free web hosting with an eye to building a userbase. I get the impression ownership of the domain changed here, as now the copyright message is for YourZ.com.

May 2001 they put up a maintenance page, and then in June switch to a page where you can sign up to receive news of what's going on. Seems to stay that way until May 2002, at which point it starts showing a blank page, or an almost-blank page.

Something happened in August 2003, but without the images I can't tell what. Another change of ownership or focus?

October 2003 seems to be when the social networking site was launched. The Terms and Conditions refer to MySpace LLC as the company behind it, so potentially another change of ownership here.

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Myspace was a cool place to find people I haven't spoken to in a while,...'

Why are US residents obsessed with contacting people who had a locker near them in high school?
Don't you make any 'friends' later in life?

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell searches for facebook?

Re:Too late.

[shikaisi]

They just need sufficiently advanced technology. That would be indistinguishable.

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what your mom said last night, as I proceeded to poke her with all 7 inches of my "joke".

Re:Too late.

[kd5zex]

It's actually very simple, most Americans are obsessed with "one-upping" their peers as it is the American way. We want to see the jock/popular-girl 10 years down the road and read or see about his/her failures with higher education / weight gain / hair loss / unplanned pregnancies / divorces / legal issues. We also hold events known as class reunions, this event is held for the same purpose.

Re:Too late.

[markhb]

From what I've seen, part of it was when high school kids who got accepted to college got their .edu email addresses early; that allowed them to register for Facebok and join the community of their new school. This led to a stratification where Facebook became the place where the college-bound kids hung out and Myspace was left to the people who weren't going to college. I've read that this extended to the military in Iraq, where Myspace, largely used by the enlisted men, was blocked at the firewall but Facebook, used by the college-educated officers, wasn't. FB then was able to build up a lot of buzz about itself behind it's .edu-only wall while Myspace received very little in the way of investment, and once FB opened itself up to everyone then Myspace became deserted.

Re:Too late.

[vlueboy]

Very true. Thanks for the added research. It seems too sudden to just be one company changing models, and yourZ.com appears to be dead. Anyway, I took another look and found there are a couple pictures in the tour page, and forgot how much of a Friendster clone it was --its AOLification is what made it win that battle.

Date-hopping on wayback machine tends to be a pain. Just last night I was browsing through some fan forums for a Showtime show ending on 2004. Less than a year later, the domain was parked, apparently without notice, and 2 years ago it was deregistered from DNS, to my surprise. What is interesting is clicking at the end and then back and back.

DNS aside, looking at the /. and Yahoo landing pages morphing throughout 13 years can be eye-opening too.

Re:Too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

and 4chan

recapture the Magic

[turkeyfish]

and the money. There's a fortune to be made both stealing and prying into people's private lives. Expect Murdoch who always trolls for scandal that will advance his business interests to be eager to tune his new media property, you.

Re:recapture the Magic

[shougyin]

How could you be so negative! THEY HAVE A NEW FRONT PAGE!!!

There's no way these guys are doing anything wrong! It has music stuff and TV stuff on there!!!

Seriously, and because we are out with X and now on to Y means that Z (ALL of you) will need to pay A ($$$) so you can have the same great crap you did before, but now it's got music stuff and more stuff!!!

Yep, I think I’m sold!!! I'm officially quitting the internet!

A site for Gen-Y 10-30 somethings?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

MySpace?.. I liked it better when it was called Facebook!

its dead

[Nyall]

myspace == new geocities.

I stopped using it because I was sick of all the garish pages people would put together and the automated music playing.

Re:its dead

[fiannaFailMan]

myspace == new geocities.

I stopped using it because I was sick of all the garish pages people would put together and the automated music playing.

Amen, brother. That and the endless pages that grow so big that they crash my browser. Who in their right mind designs a social networking site that displays every comment ever made on your page?

Re:its dead

[LSDelirious]

I actually kinda liked all the overdecorated pages.... if you check someone's profile and its loaded down with flash garbage, you know right away this person is a complete moron and you should avoid talking to them!

Re:its dead

[interkin3tic]

Also getting spammed by shitty bands. I realize that may have been the original point of myspace, which ended up being what drove me back away from myspace.

The bigger issue was probably that facebook seemed to have better features, and it took me a while to realize that those features were coming at an increased cost of privacy.

Re:its dead

[Anonymous Coward]

GeoCities was nothing like MySpace. It may have been a fetid pit of web design abominations, but it also had an incredible amount of useful and obscure information. Whereas MySpace has shitty bands and duckface.

Re:its dead

[kaizokuace]

there is a reason that only a very small portion of the population actually gets paid to design things.

Re:its dead

[painandgreed]

myspace == new geocities.

I stopped using it because I was sick of all the garish pages people would put together and the automated music playing.

Amen, brother! They let people program their own webpages with html and look what it got us, a garish nightmare of unreadable crap. What we really need is some site that prevented people from doing whatever they wanted with their own site. Hem it in like some sort of garden. Then block them from doing what they want with it like it was walled off. It's the only way that these things will be useable. If we are to make these sort of things actually readable and useable, then they need to be tightly controlled or they'll end up a chaotic mess.

Re:its dead

[Anonymous Coward]

myspace == new geocities.

I stopped using it because I was sick of all the garish pages people would put together and the automated music playing.

Amen, brother. That and the endless pages that grow so big that they crash my browser. Who in their right mind designs a social networking site that displays every comment ever made on your page?

Uh, doesn't facebook do the same thing, more or less? Sure it's hidden with some javascript junk, but a facebook page can be browser-crashing as well if you go back far enough.

The real reason myspace comments or anything would crash a browser is because people didn't understand that too much of it would eat up memory. So every time they saw a glittery thing, they added it to their page. Every time they made a comment, they had to have some shiny rotating picture of something funny/sexy/on fire to accompany it. That's why the browser slowed down.

People did the same thing on geocities and tripod, except instead of javascript it was a fuckload of .gifs. Then there was a period where everyone designed their own websites, and guess what they did? They went nuts with flash. EVERYTHING WAS FLASH. Myspace is basically just the tail end of this phenomenon of letting people design things themselves.

Basically, people can't be trusted to be able to design their pages themselves. That's why people decided on facebook as a standard. Not because it is any way better or cooler. Only because it inhibits and restrains the design abilities of retards.

Re:its dead

[fiannaFailMan]

Uh, doesn't facebook do the same thing, more or less? Sure it's hidden with some javascript junk, ...

No. It uses AJAX to retrieve older stuff once you ask for it.

What else is new?

[operagost]

Since when was Myspace ever NOT Gen-Y oriented? My Gen-X brain had it filed under "Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany" since the first day I stumbled onto some 14 year old's putrid purple-and-pink theme, complete with animated-GIF hearts and skulls and two Avril Lavigne videos playing simultaneously.

Re:What else is new?

[fahrbot-bot]

Since when was Myspace ever NOT Gen-Y oriented? ...

Hm. I heard MySpace was for young girls and old men looking for young girls. No wonder Rupert wanted it! And, I'm sure he lost many a night's sleep trying to figure out how to pay-wall the damn thing...

Re:What else is new?

[genfail]

I'm sure he lost many a night's sleep trying to figure out how to pay-wall the damn thing...

Monsters don't sleep, they wait.

Re:What else is new?

[tehcyder]

Since when was Myspace ever NOT Gen-Y oriented? My Gen-X brain had it filed under "Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany" since the first day I stumbled onto some 14 year old's putrid purple-and-pink theme, complete with animated-GIF hearts and skulls and two Avril Lavigne videos playing simultaneously.

Hey, I'm a forty-something male, you insensitive clod!

Oopsie...

Yeah.

[blair1q]

Yeah.

The place is so full of 30-60 somethings that you can't get a Justin Bieber quote in edgewise...

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keith Richards is their Justin Bieber.

the #1 reason myspace failed

[rev_sanchez]

Most people have terrible taste and myspace gave them a lot more of an opportunity to unleash that onto the internet. They became the social networking version of Geocities and that ruined their branding.

Facebook locks down the look and feel of their website quite a lot and for branding purposes that's a good thing.

Re:the #1 reason myspace failed

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people have terrible taste and myspace gave them a lot more of an opportunity to unleash that onto the internet.

Not only that but they prevented you from making a decent page even if you did have good taste. The site was full of hard coded styles that would break inheritance and make it almost impossible to make a page that didn't reak of 1994.

Durned kids

[Snufu]

MySpace is positioning itself for the so-called Gen Y crowd, or those roughly between 10 and 30 years old.

As a member of the decreasingly relevant Gen X crowd, let me be the first to say 'Get off MyLawnSpace.'

Re:Durned kids

[aekafan]

You kidding? X is just getting old enough now to get real political power. As all generations before us have discovered, that's all that matters.

Re:Durned kids

[El_Oscuro]

Its "Get off my LAN", you insensitive clod!

Gen Y?

[Daetrin]

Everyone in the 10-30 range? So they're targeting absolutely everyone who grew up with the internet? That's a nice goal, but not really practical. Everyone who's comfortable with the level of social networking involved in MySpace has already moved on to Facebook, and everyone else is holding on desperately to their LiveJournal/DreamWidth or their Wordpress or their IRC or whatever they use for their communication with the world. One group has already moved on to something "bigger and better" and the other group is quite happy with what they have already.

Re:Gen Y?

[icebraining]

Also Tumblr, seems to have a decent userbase.

Re:Gen Y?

[hedwards]

More like 10-20 year olds. I remember going over to my friend's house in the midish 90s and seeing compuserve. IIRC we even spent a couple minutes on the internet and he explained how much better it was than compuserve.

IIRC I was almost driving age at that point. By the time we got the net a while later, it was still way before most people were using it.

Re:Gen Y?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I had internet in the mid 90s (96? 97?). It was somewhat common between my friends. And I'm in a third world hell hole called Rio de Janeiro. Where the fuck are you?

Re:Gen Y?

[kd5zex]

Internet access was not prevalent in South-Central Texas until about '98 or '99, and it was dial up AOL.

IIRC, broadband was not rolled out widespread until about '01 or '02 and I did not get broadband in my area until about '04.

Re:Gen Y?

[Voyager529]

pedantic warning:

IRC is different from the others listed in that:

-It's a pretty well established, matured PROTOCOL. Many other chat applications use some principles of IRC on the back end (I've dealt with several java and AJAX-based chat/support products that boil down to a really shiny skin over IRC)
-It's used a lot for the file transfer functionality (we only swap Linux distros! really!)
-the alternatives to it have been AIM/MSN/ICQ (which are better for one-on-one chats, but not for groups or an "open door policy"), full-blown chatrooms (which have existed for quite a while, and again also use some flavor of IRC), and Facebook Chat (great idea, terrible implementation, but useful courtesy of Digsby)

Re:Gen Y?

[tehcyder]

The point is that if you are now 30 and so were born in 1980, you didn't grow up with the internet unless your parents were very techy people
By the mid 90s when internet access became fairly widespread you'd have been fifteen or so, and there's not that much difference from first using the internet at fifteen or thirty.
The big difference is with people born after the early Nineties who have been exposed to the internet since they were conscious.

The target isn't FaceBook

[Yvan256]

Plans are for the site to focus on entertainment with the home page constantly updating items about music, movies and television shows that are most discussed on the site at any one time.

IMHO they don't want to steal users from FaceBook, they want to prevent Apple's Ping from becoming the next largest media-based social network because that's where the money is: movies, TV shows, music and ads.

The thing is, all iTunes users already have the potential of being Ping users, it's only one click away.

Re:The target isn't FaceBook

[countSudoku()]

The thing is, all iTunes users already have the potential of being Ping users, it's only one click away.

Ewwww, tell me where so I don't accidentally click on that! That's the cyber-equivalent of stepping in dogshit.

Trends doesn't tell the story

[Infonaut]

Facebook is doing quite well in Europe.

Re:still crap

[countSudoku()]

Did you go to the prom with my ex-wife?

Suggestion: contact Richard Hell

[RevWaldo]

The perfect theme song for the rebrand - let's get some marketing synergy going!

http://www.richardhell.com/lyrics2.html#BlankGeneration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3x-VdOb44

(And of course: http://www.myspace.com/richardhellvoidoids )

It even addresses MySpace's problem:

I belong to the blank generation and
I can take it or leave it each time
I belong to the ______ generation but
I can take it or leave it each time


.

The Site that Brought you....

[Macrat]

Tila Tequila

The world will never be the same.

Re:The Site that Brought you....

[hedwards]

There's always been whores, it's just now we're supposed to settle for sharing the same one and looking but not touching.

Gotta love PHB's

[Tablizer]

'MySpace is positioning itself for...those roughly between 10 and 30 years old

A brilliant strategy to capture a niche ignored by FaceBook, which targets 11 to 31 year-olds.
   

More?

[genfail]

So their answer to users fleeing their site in droves is two parts; 1. Examine what drove their user base away in the first place 2. CRANK THAT SHIT TO 11!

Good luck with that.

News at 11

[Kazymyr]

As someone who has made a conscious decision from the very beginning to shun the whole MySpaceBook/Twittedin/social networking phenomenon, let me be the first to say:
Pffrrghttblargh!

Re:News at 11

[El_Oscuro]

Don't you know, the correct spelling is:

PFFTFTHTF!!!!!!!

How can a website go PFFTFTHTF!!!!!!! anyway?

How about music sites that cater

[future assassin]

to people in the 30/40's, what are we dead? But I guess that would mean they would have to dig up creative artists that don't release songs that have ran through some software algorithm too see if it'll be consumed by the masses.

Re:How about music sites that cater

[Yvan256]

Never mind that, I'd be happy to simply have tunes released without the "screw dynamic range, let's make it sound LOUDER for radio diffusion" crap.

Seriously, watch the waveforms of a lot of tunes sold on iTunes and other places. It's a shame to see the music labels completely destroying the tunes they're in charge of selling.

Re:How about music sites that cater

[Anonymous Coward]

From a marketting standpoint in the music industry, yes, you are dead since you consume very little mass market music. Why in heavens name would you expect advertisers to chase you if you look down your nose at their produce as something "consumed by the masses".

Is there money to be made advertising to your specific demographic (a fat tail phenomenon)? Probably, but its nowhere near as much as you can get by marketing to 15 year old kids.

Re:How about music sites that cater

[tehcyder]

I think that as you get older you realise there's more to life than listening to fucking music and saying how hot the singer is. Not a lot more, mind.

Re:How about music sites that cater

[SparkleMotion88]

From the point of view of marketing, you die when you turn 30 and come back to life when you turn 55. In between that time, you have just the right combination of poverty and responsibility that prevents you from throwing money away based on advertising.

huh?

[Charliemopps]

What's a myspace?

Received an email about it this morning.

[TodLiebeck]

Just received an unsolicited commercial email from them advertising this new site (what's that other term for these again?) It went to one of our support accounts...the kind that wouldn't be found unless one were to skim a web site for email addresses.

The unsubscribe link from this invitation to join requires that I first "log into my account". The email is an invitation to join.

It worked for Yahoo...

[Anonymous Coward]

"with the home page constantly updating items about music, movies and television shows that are most discussed on the site at any one time."

Yes, a more cluttered home page. Its what all the popular sites are doing!

Re:It worked for Yahoo...

[Voyager529]

different ideas. Google's home page is great if you're actually searching for stuff. Yahoo is a bit better at putting some ideas in front of you when you're not quite sure what to look for. While the page may not be layed out perfectly, it does have much more information on it and I've read some articles on it (and -don't judge me bro- MSN.com) that I wouldn't necessarily have searched for, but was worth 2 minutes of my time to skim through. The fact that I got distracted by half a dozen ads has made Yahoo a dollar or three as well.

There already is one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called aarp.org

SNL's MySpace Seminar

[CohibaVancouver]

http://breesays.buzznet.com/user/video/16709/

If they really wanted to generate buzz...

[vortex2.71]

They should announce the new site on their Facebook page.

Re:If they really wanted to generate buzz...

[mavasplode]

They did.

Re:If they really wanted to generate buzz...

[tehcyder]

Or they could tweet everyone.

Power in numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is power in numbers. FB is now many times larger tha MySpace ever was. Even if FB is just a fad, it will die slowly. The world has never before seen a community consisting of over 500 million people and such a beast won't die overnight. I would feel rather safe betting that even if FB is just a fad, it will still have some tens of millions of users (which it would still have even if the amount of users went down by 90%) a decade from now.

MySpace is still around?

[Tangential]

Wow! I didn't realize MySpace was still around. I guess I haven't been as bored as I thought I was.

What killed MySpace is registration & anonymit

[Anonymous Coward]

I should be able to post something on someone's Bulletin Board without all the hassle of being a "Registered User" , and then yea the code of MySpace is the bloat that caused it to be such a bad medium of Bulletin Board at that. They should have a option that you can view the page through a default filter as though it presents to you under a certain bandwidth limit as by dithering images down to lower bpp-levels and replacing Javascript presentations of audio by the proper HTML (3) equivalents and such.

But still, just let someone post plain text without having to register and you'll get your clientelle back: some people are only stopping by to say HELLO and don't want a general presence on the domain. The same is said as to why people want a website without the jurisdiction loop ICANN brackets onto you by DMCA: RIAA-MPAA/NSA crud. I can realy see a network of peers immune from ICANN that can't trace to anyone but by nodes forming VPN's across Cell Phone towers.

All Social Media is Doomed to Die

[Anonymous Coward]

...Sooner or later. Even the vaunted Facebook will be dead within the next ten years. Why? Because social media is designed on fads. Eventually some platform will come out that everyone will 1) stumble upon, 2) rush to in their zeal to be first, 3) or migrate to because all their friends did. Facebook will be left wanting for users just as MySpace is right now (and I like how MySpace pulled the whole "I'm Prince, so I can be an unpronounceable symbol if I want). Nothing lasts forever... excepted cached copies on the Net.

Really, I can't wait until I read a headline something like "Facebook Dwindles Against Ass_Flap." It'll happen.

Changing the logo to something really stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Didnt the GAP just try that?

Cougars

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this would be a good change from what it is now, the land of Cougars and teen age girls making the Duck Face.