MySpace, a wannabe social network, pokes back on Facebook with a redesign, which actually looks quite promising. MySpace was once the kooky, colorful king of the Internet.It let you mercilessly rank friends, post sepia cell phone photos, wallpaper your page with a full body shot of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It was a virtual bedroom littered with things you loved.
But in just a few years, it fell hard. Today, MySpace has roughly 130 million users. Facebook has 500 million. And a hit movie devoted to its salacious rise and young CEO.
Fans of the world, welcome to the new MySpace. It's not powered by data, it's powered by you.
Wednesday was marked as the beginning of the new MySpace, with its stripped-down logo of my[_____], and a video touting the above message. The changes will continue to roll out through November. Instead of traditional social networking, it aims to be a "social entertainment destination," a place for celebrity news, television, music and video games. The new look is cleaner, with simple tabbed browsing and fewer, better placed advertisements. People will use profiles to talk about movies and stars, to suggest music to friends. They'll get recommendations in the vein of Netflix.
MySpace was born in 2003 on the heels of a similar site, Friendster. It immediately became popular with young people and bands seeking free tools to meet people and market themselves.
"I think MySpace is dead," said Ingle, 19, of Joplin, Mo. "I don't really log onto that thing anymore. Wasted a lot of my youth on that thing, promoting and making friends and talking to kids. MySpace kind of oversaturated the music scene." The gap narrowed. By 2007, Facebook had attracted 30 million users, gaining on MySpace's 68 million. MySpace revamped to look more like Facebook. It added status updates, more photo and song space. But many people were already gone. "It was like MySpace for grownups," said Chris Stainton, 40, member of Tampa '80s band Rubix Cubed. "So I switched over to Facebook from MySpace."
MySpace has pushed news of its redesign through viral videos and chat forums. The website also has the open ears of 298,779 fans on its "Facebook page".
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