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

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.

[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.

[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

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: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?

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

[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!

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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: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

[KillaGouge]

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

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: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?

Trends doesn't tell the story

[Infonaut]

Facebook is doing quite well in Europe.

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!

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: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!