Myspace Finally Admits Facebook is Superior, Changes Focus to Media
posted Sunday Nov 7, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo
Perez Hilton fans rejoice. Myspace has finally conceded to Facebook, waving their white flag and admitting that Facebook is now the social network mafioso in charge. Myspace, instead, is changing focus to music, movies, TV, games and celebrities that the ever so graceful and respectful younger generation loves. The News Corp-acquired website formerly known as a social networking giant announced this week that it is working on a beta site that will be media-centric.
Myspace CEO Mike Jones spoke on the change.
This marks the beginning of an exciting turning point for Myspace. Our new strategy expands on Myspace's existing strengths - a deep understanding of social, a wealth of entertainment content and the ability to surface emerging cultural trends in real time through our users.
There's more to this whole change though. It seems that money could be made from this venture. Hit the break to learn more and to see a picture of the site.
First, notice how the name is now spelled. Myspace dropped the capital 'S' in their brand. Also, the whole website has a very WinPho 7 feel to it, with tiles all over the place. You can see that finding bands, actors and other items of interest is more simplified. Very active users will be titled "curators", these people are identified by Myspace to be the ones "in the know" about the haps going on with the cool kids. Lastly, as with everything else now, you will have the ability to become "mayor" of those new media channels by commenting and sharing content through them, which will earn Foursquare-type badges that will be displayed on your homepage alongside the content that you decided to share.
Myspace has a lot to account for lately. Last year it canned a third of its US employees and over two-thirds of their international ones in order to stop the company from going into the red as they continue to drop in the number of people using the site.
Maybe this change will help them regain some marketshare, at least on a different front. Myspace has always been the place to promote your music and with people finally realizing how useless Twitter really is, this might be the next thing everybody shifts to to find out about their favorite celebrities. I don't know, we'll see, all I know is I know I won't use it. And if Apple buys Facebook, I won't use them either.
