Ask anyone who knows anything about the media and they will tell you that Myspace, the once-dominant social networking site, has been declared dead since as early at 2006. Myspace is like that one girl in high school who once fit in with the ‘popular crowd’ but tried overly hard to fit in resulting in people making fun of her.
Thanks to Justin Timberlake, teen pop explosion from the 90’s and early 2000’s, Myspace is staging a comeback by using the pre-timeline version of Facebook everyone loved. Just kidding about the last part. No but really, just last fall Justin Timberlake was revealed as one of the top investors in this forgotten social networking site, which became ridden by spammers, known as Myspace.
After Facebook’s easy-to-use interface and more user-friendly features won over the hearts of millions of online users, Myspace instantly became a thing of the past. This week, Timberlake and co-owners Chris and Tim Vanderhook presented the new Myspace in Los Angeles. According to Rolling Stone, “the site is now a crisp, design-forward presence full of high-resolution images and a horizontal activity stream.” Picture a specifically social driven music player and discovery engine, which looks something along the lines of a magazine that collided with Facebook all while intertwining Pinterest and Instagram within it. “The site now strives for simplification,” says Rolling Stone, “[and] instead of friends, followers or like buttons, Myspace users ‘connect’.”
It might just be me, but I think Justin Timberlake’s roll as Sean Parker, founder of Napster, in The Social Network got to his head a little too much. Possibly promising “artist-to-artist communication and collaboration, giving fans the opportunity to listen in,” all of these new and possible features depend on “the revived site’s success in winning over former users and a younger generation raised on the likes of Instagram and Tumblr.” For the time being, Myspace will remain invite-only; however, it is now integrated with Facebook, which will allow new users to sign in using their Facebook accounts instead of going through the hassle of creating/remembering a new username and password.
The question on everyone’s mind is, will this revamp really be newer and better? Myspace is the home to 5 million plus unassigned acts, who obviously will benefit from the in-depth analytics that will reveal where fans are listening from; however, is it just going to be an outlet for aspiring musicians or will it trump Facebook and Twitter, becoming the ruler of the social networks again? After a few months or even weeks of messing around with the new Myspace, it is unlikely people will make the transition from Facebook and Twitter, even with all of its new features.