For the last several years, Myspace has fallen into a state of ridicule and abandonment. The once leader of social media platforms quickly fell to the feet of current giant, Facebook. Unable to innovate and keep up with Zuckerbergs website, Myspace attempted to change its direction, rebranding itself with a new logo and media focus. The result was a messy, unappealing, and unusable disaster. Falling further into irrelevancy, Myspace finally sold for $35 million in 2011 to Specific Media, which is owned by the three Vanderhook brothers. These entrepreneurs split the stake with Justin Timberlake and planned to evolve Myspace into the premiere digital destination for original shows, video content and music. Ditching the stylizations MySpace and My____ for the more mature, Myspace, the Nickelback of social networks is finalizing its changes to the service and has opened the new Myspace to beta users by invitation. I quickly accepted my own and dove into the services new features.
9. The User Interface (UI)
...is clean. The new Myspace works like a sideways Pinterest. You can now find the content posted by your friends and favorite artists in your stream. At first look, it looks cluttered, but using the filters, you can pretty easily navigate content relevant to your interests (profile updates, photos, music, posts, etc.) The way you connect to content is new, too. You now have the ability to comment, connect, or share any post as long as its privacy level is set to public. The connect feature is actually one of the biggest and focal additions to the site. Youll find it everywhere in the UI, pictures, music, mixes (Ill get to that) and most importantly, profiles. It works like this, once a friend has joined the site, you can search for his name using the easily accessible and large fonted search function. Once on their profile, you can connect to them using a button that looks like a Venn Diagram. Once youve clicked it, the circle on the left will shade itself in. Once your friend connects from their end, the circle will meld into one shaded circle, representing completed connectivity. On photos, connecting seems to be the equivalent to the like feature on Facebook. Connecting to mixes will add them to your mixes menu. Ah yes... click next to read about Mixes...