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back to article MySpace hides in bathroom ahead of make-over

MySpace will be given a Facebooklift next week – a move seen by many as News Corps’ latest attempt to force the social networking website to earn its keep. Tons of changes will be made to the site in the coming months in what Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has described as the largest scale re-launch of a website of its size. …

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  1. Andrew Norton

    does this mean

    no more waiting for 5 minutes whilst all the crap is downloaded for the page

    no more eye-shatteringly hideous pay designs and layouts

    no more horrible songs pumped out at full blast

    no more flashy-blinky crap?

    Thats something facebook has over myspace - the pages don't look like the losers in the RNIB art contest

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  2. richard
    Stop

    it really does look like shite doesn't it?

    myspace does look shite - discuss

    and it's had its 15 minutes of fame...move on people - discuss

    is social networking actually total bollocks - don't bother discussing, it is.

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  3. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Paris Hilton

    Black type on white Page? ...never

    its some kind of rule that myspace pages be unreadable.

    paris, just because.

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  4. TimM

    MySpace - a teen bedroom design disaster

    Frequented by teens with no taste. Myspace pages generally look like the hideously bad Geocities pages of old back in the days when people thought it was "cool" to cram every possible bit of media, animation and script on their page and used Frontpage to do the layout!

    Teens still think it's cool, in the same way they shove posters all over their bedroom walls, or paint their rooms in garish colours (or just black if they're goths).

    Facebook on the other hand appealed more to older generations (approaching Logan's Run terminal age at least!), because of simplistic layout and no options to allow teens to cram their pages with scripts overriding the standard layout.

    However Facebook instead allows users to cram their pages with crap applications, and worse all their "friends" get inflicted with requests to add those applications.

    Seems perhaps things are going full circle and the granddaddy, Friendsreunited, is finally catching up with Web 2.0 and joined the 21st century in web design. Enough to make it appealing for non-teens, who really just want a site to keep in contact with people without all the crap.

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  5. J-Wick
    Paris Hilton

    "Suck a lemon into a cameraphone"

    If you've ever seen a myspace profile picture you'll know what I mean. It's mainly, but not exclusively the girl who do it. Bonus points if you get the reference.

    Myspace is actually pretty good for the band pages, but it does tend to bring my (admittedly old) computer to its knees whenever I play some music.

    Paris cos I'd like to bring her to .....oh I can't be arsed, you know where I'm going with this...

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  6. Steven Swenson
    Thumb Down

    I am guilty

    of having a myspace. However, I coded the layout, colors, etc myself. I first got it because a friend of mine wanted me to view their profile, which was private because of their age. My myspace sat blank for several months before I decided one day to spend a few hours coding it to look nice and adding a small autobiography of myself to it.

    I thought to myself "Finally, a place where coders can be cool because they know how to make their pages look cool. Everyone will want to befriend us programmers so that we can spiffy out their pages too!"

    Boy, was I naive...

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    myspace does has it's uses...

    ...it's a great place for bands. I'm in one, and the first thing a promoter will ask when we're booking a gig is "what's your myspace address?".

    People can go on, listen to music, see a few pics and read a bit about the band. Great.

    As a social networking site, it's fucking awful. I don't want to listen to my friend's favourite track - to be perfectly honest I really don't give a fuck about it.

    As a site in general, it's also piss poor - I tend to peruse the internet on my mac, using Firefox, and myspace layout is simply shocking on that. It's slow, there's random boxes all over the place, i have to sideways scroll even though the content is supposed to fit to 800x600. It's basically a bloated, unusable piece of crap.

    But then, facebook is very much the same - the only real difference is facebook seem to have a better HTML guy, so all the shit they ram down your throat is at least contained within the confines of your screen.

    Hopefully this relaunch will not only make myspace a usable, pleasant place to visit, but also forget the dillusional idea of it being 'the' social networking site, and get down to what it does - despite it's flaws - do quite well; the hosting and delivery of music and information to, and from, like minded fans.

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  8. ben carroll
    Paris Hilton

    User friendly?

    I hope it will become more user friendly, the flash adverts everywhere are a nightmare.

    I have used myspace for a few months now - its an invaluable free tool for my music promotion company, but I still have no idea how to use it properly. While I have a personal profile on Facebook, and use it from time-to-time to see what my actual real-life friends are up to, many of them are currently travelling and its nice to stay up-to-date I have always avoided Myspace because it is overwhelmingly for kids and teens, like social-networking for babies, for people who have never experienced seperation from friends or ever made good friends with people they met while travelling.

    While I'm pleased myspace exists because of the benefits to my business, I don't feel it will ever lose the 'stigma' of being a site largely for teens. Hopefully the changes will make the site easier to use, and hopefully I will be able to use it without some hideous music blasting out (enable/disable autoplay switch on your account for other profiles would be a good feature) and due to differing layouts and styles spending more time looking for the stop button than anything meaningful.

    Oh and on top of all that, since I put my status to single I get flash adverts from match.com everwhere with a video of a girl that looks so similar to my ex the first time I saw it I thought it was her, now that's a kick in the teeth!.

    /Ben

    Paris - because I bet she can work myspace better than I ever will.

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  9. Angus Ireland
    Paris Hilton

    Hahaha

    Just went onto the MySpace homepage. No mention of this new look MySpace at all.

    There was, however, a picture of the lady herself. Yes that's right! Paris was on the homepage! Now what was she doing there? ;-)

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  10. Tony Hoyle

    Danger!

    "interact with the site *and with brands*"

    "inked a deal with a major advertiser"

    "financial targets"

    I don't think this makeover is going to be to the advantage of the users, to be honest. I predict some ad laden 'portal'.

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  11. The Avangelist
    Pirate

    myspace Vs facebook how dreary

    They're both totally shit.

    Myspace is saturated and therefore cack? I don't think so I think the crux in myspace is its searchability, in that it is far more voyeuristic by allowing you to view peoples profiles without their permission.

    Facebook (at least for me in the UK) takes an average of 3 minutes to load the login page, and a further 60 seconds to get to the profile page. The one thing I like is the IM but it continually crashes, and I want to be able to turn it on or and off because what about those times you don't want to be disturbed, or don't want people to know your online.

    Being a massive music fan Last.fm is my bag at present however as they start to trial their new pay for features I am noticing more and more material becoming 30sec snippets rather than full tracks which is muchos annoying.

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  12. Chris C

    Myspace for music

    I've been to a handful of Myspace pages, all of which were band pages (finally found In The Pink / Sunshine Jive after 15 years of searching, long after wearing out their demo tape). While some of the comments here indicate it's good for bands and music distribution, my personal feeling is "it's shit". Horrible page layouts, annoying backgrounds that make the text nearly impossible to read (like The Reg's "Humour liable to cause offence" text), endless pictures of "friends", and endless pagefuls of trite comments.

    If Myspace really wants to be useful for music distribution and/or finding out about bands, they should make a separate section specifically for music and make it actually usable. They can take a lesson from the old mp3.com. mp3.com made it easy to find new music. myspace.com makes me want to take my own life.

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  13. Richie

    Buy more stuff

    "This is more than a facelift; we're changing the way people interact with the site and with brands"

    Oh great. Just what we need. A new way to "interact with Brands"

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  14. Andrew Maddison

    @ The Evangelist

    In the bottom right of the window on Facebook there's a little head/shoulders icon - click that and then select "go offline" to appear offline in Facebook chat. I assume it works, I've never used that feature myself!

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  15. Alan
    Boffin

    What about Bebo?

    Isn't that better than both <snigger>

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    best laugh all day

    "is the big day when <s>saddos<s> users"

    Nice one El Reg.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Nope. Still Sucks Like a Black Hole

    They just made the headers look a bit more "Web 2.0."

    Poo.

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  18. helen
    Stop

    myspace for music... like nah!

    a makeover for myspace .... don't tell me, more room for ads

    move ON people.

    The myspace search is shite, generally the bands pages look like a dog vomited, there are only 4 tracks max and you can't leave the page while they are playing or the player closes and the music stops .... (unless the band have one of those clever stand alone things). So if you want to listen to a bands wares you have to be prepared to be bored shitless looking at flashing dog vomit.

    If you want new music try www.mysongcast.com

    or www.purevolume.com or www.noisehead.com.

    Even Bebo is better than myspace or the a'cursed, annoying and slightly sinister facebook..... which brings me to social networking. The abovementioned music sites also have social networking aspects, but to a targeted audience of music fans and their friends..... and no spammy crap.

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