MySpace, Really?

I can already hear you out there. My street cred as a technophile and internet media guy just took a major ding with the mere mention of the site. Like most of you, I have a checkered history with the original social media powerhouse. For the brief time I used it, I had a love-hate relationship with it. Nothing much has changed except MySpace itself.

For those of you who don't know, Newscorp bought MySpace in 2008 with the hopes of revamping the fading giant. They have begun the remodeling of the site in good earnest. Most of the changes were too little and too late to save users. In January of this year, MySpace lost ten million unique users in a single month. That brings its twelve month total loss to approximately thirty million users.

Despite this, there is some potential. Before I get to the good, let's hit the bad. One of the biggest reasons I never used MySpace much was the excessive customization of the profile pages. I'm all for making a page your own however there comes a point when it becomes too much. Most of the personal pages I looked at were so pimped out that the content was illegible. Colors and images blended together to create a bright and often confusing barrage to the optic nerve. To be blunt, many of the pages prove to me that some people only have taste in their mouth. Then again, given the success of certain restaurants, I call that into question too.

I found their version of the news feed a little cumbersome and sluggish. Keeping track of friends on MySpace without going to each individual profile was not easy. I never used it enough to get better with it after several attempts to create clever posts on it or insert links with little result.

There is some hope for the site's future. Newscorp realized early on that MySpace would never again be a competitor with Facebook. Too many people had left with a sour taste in their mouths after seeing the (formerly) much freer environment of Facebook. Instead, they saw a different opportunity to go head to head with ReverbNation, Bandcamp, and other entertainment sites. They began making changes to drive usage in that direction.

I felt I had to take another look so I created a new account since my original had long lapsed. The options from the beginning were different. There were four choices: personal, musician/band, filmmaker, and comedian. I chose "filmmaker" for my page for reasons that will become apparent in the coming months. Right off the bat, the page was still very user friendly allowing for options tailored to my selection. I was impressed by the ease of customization. I'm not a fan of pimping pages but I do like having a lot of options for the information displayed.

There have also been improvements in the search engine. I looked for people I know and for bands that have pages. I found who I was looking for right off the bat with little difficulty. In fact, it was easier to find people and pages than on Facebook or ReverbNation. That's a distinct improvement over the old system.

I think they might be on the right track. If they are able to overcome the stigma from the site's original setup, MySpace could be a player again especially for those of us in media. As long as Facebook continues to make it more difficult to promote artists, causes, and other pages, page owners are going to look elsewhere to get their message out. For the entertainment industry, MySpace just might be the way if the fans can be brought back to the site.

In other words, some of the problems that caused the shift to Facebook still exist but they are making some progress with the new direction. Credit still has to be given to them for being the first of their kind. MySpace is largely responsible for the social media revolution now well underway. Will it be the vehicle that the entertainment world can use to build and communicate with a fan base? Only time will tell but it is possible.

By the way, if you want to be my friend, my fairly incomplete profile is here. Not that I expect many of you to be MySpace users.