A Look at the New MySpace

At my other job at Activore we are aware of everything in the social networking space, so without further ado, the new MySpace (new.myspace.com).

For a while now, it has been just a signup page. (Which is probably still all you'll see.)

Today i was "Invited to Join the New Myspace" with the words: "It’s here. Now all it needs is you. You’ve been selected to join the new Myspace with an exclusive pre-launch invite. Create your account and start exploring today."

The most entertaining thing is that you can sign up to the new MySpace with your Facebook, Twitter, or ... "MySpace Classic" accounts.

Where you select what type of person you are on MySpace, it's pretty much all connected to the music industry:

The profile is very standard (image, description) and very short (150 characters). I notice i forgot to change my location, and left it with the one it pre-selected based on my current IP address no doubt. The profile has public or restricted as options with no explanation now as to who exactly restricted restricts to.

The 'you don't have any friends yet' screen is also pretty standard and nicely done, i think they use the overlapping circles as the symbol for the tools to connect with people and things.

The music-playing bar at the bottom remains prominent, works well, and is still happily biased toward lesser-known musicians who i'm guessing may have uploaded their work themselves.

The search seems good, but as it's focused on music it's not clear how you're ever going to find many people to connect to-- guess if i'd joined with Facebook or Twitter it'd be re-connecting me to people from there.

Overall the interface is not entirely intuitive, back and forward buttons sometimes work but not always, things feel a little jumpy, ready to appear or disappear without your meaning to necessarily click or hover right there.

Looks more focused on being a destination and a little less on being a platform by which bands can promote themselves to Facebook and Twitter accounts. They may do something very interesting with social music-- it wonder if social music becomes commoditized, that is, if every social network will have it. Antiquated so-called intellectual property laws are the problem here. If licensing issues can be resolved, it certainly makes sense for Activore to give people a way to share workout music or generally inspiring tunes.