Myspace mutates Windows 8 with new look
Video demo would do Redmond proud
Myspace* has released a video that shows off a new look that, at first glance, owes a fair bit to the design thinking behind Windows 8, with a dash of Pinterest thrown in for good measure.
The once-dominant social network, infamously acquired by Rupert Murdoch for US$580m in 2005 and then offloaded Specific Media for a paltry US$35m in 2011, has faded to near-irrelevance of late.
Your correspondent, in a previous professional life, chatted to a very senior executive from the network's Australian incarnation, who blamed the demise on three things.
The first was being based in Los Angeles, which is not exactly the best place on earth to hire coders.
The second was a reliance on Microsoft's .Net development platform, which he said made upgrades tricky at the time Myspace needed to make them. The third killer, he told us, was News Ltd culture, which didn't make for the kind of constant re-invention a social network needs.
The third problem seems to have gone away, as a notice on the site says “We’re hard at work building the new Myspace, entirely from scratch,” adding that is “staying true to our roots in one important way—empowering people to express themselves however they want.”
The video below shows all that empowerment goodness at work.
The new Myspace from Myspace on Vimeo.
The site also boasts a signup form and a promise that handing over your email address will result in the issuance of an invitation to join (re-join?) the site. Just when that will happen is not disclosed. ®
*Punctuation wonks may take exception at our capitalising Myspace's initial letter only. We've done so because the new version appears to have dropped the CamelCase incarnation of the name, while the ridiculous My_____ version has been consigned to history.
COMMENTS
Funny. (was: Re: ::Yawn::)
Most people who manage to escape their mother's basement have no need of the likes of ... well, anything that identifies itself as "social media", when you think about it.
I shake hands with my friends. They are real people.
Yes, but
Maybe you have, but is your presence 'social'? Can people interact with you and express themselves in a multi-faceted and meaningful manner and develop their own paradigms of presence with shared visibility from 'your-space'?
If not, then I would suggest that..... er, ...... you're in a fortunate position.
@jake - and why would anyone care about Facebook too?
I'm not an active user of any social networking, but I must admit the new look is pleasing to me, irrespective of people's views to MySpace, it did help a lot of people get noticed and I'm pleased that there is some one that's coding something that is not a Facebook clone, I won't be using it, but good luck to them... 3rd? Time lucky!
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