MySpace Trying To Regain Lost Ground With Games and Music

Over the past several years, MySpace has lost a significant amount of the social networking market to competitors like Facebook. Now, MySpace is trying to recapture lost interest by increasing the site's focus on games and music, as well as keeping an eye out for new technologies that would directly benefit their users. "[News Corp.'s Jonathan Miller] said he is 'obsessed' with real-time technology, such as the one Twitter has exploited in its social networking and microblogging service, and he wants to see MySpace incorporate it. He also said MySpace is lagging by having a platform that has been 'too closed' to external developers, something that he wants to see changed, especially for the sake of MySpace's gaming offerings. In addition, he wants to see MySpace push ahead in mobile."

Too little, too late

[eln]

MySpace is the Detroit of social networking...once vibrant and full of life, it's not a much smaller and more depressing version of its former self. Adding things that are already widely available all over the Internet isn't going to change anything.

News Corp. wildly overspent for a turkey when they bought MySpace because, as has been proven over and over again by Mr. Murdoch himself, they have no understanding at all of how the Internet works, they have no idea what it takes to make money on the Internet, and they have no idea what anything on the Internet is actually worth.

none of that will matter

[Ralph Spoilsport]

if the page still takes a minute to load, and when it does, it's as ugly as home-made sin.

Create a Framework Like Zembly

[mattwrock]

I use Zembly to create apps on Facebook. If they join Zembly, or make a framework that is easy for developers I give it a go. I haven't been to MySpace in months.

Yes, make it more like Facebook

[AnotherUsername]

Yes, make it like Facebook, put applications in it whose main purpose is to data mine, while using a game-like interface to make the people who use it happy while they freely give out theirs and their friends' information. Yes, it is true. On Facebook, even if you don't use an application, if you don't specifically say don't use my information, your friends using the application will enable your information to be used.

Personally, I think the whole mini-application craze the web is going through is getting old. I do have Facebook, and I am so sick and tired of everyone wanting me to install an 'app' so they can level up or whatever. No, I will not give my information up so that you can get another fucking flower in your garden. I will not give my identity to a faceless corporation so that your mafia gang will get more powerful. I will not let some company use my life to earn more money for themselves just so I can see the results for some compatibility test you took and thought everyone on your friends list should take, just so you can see how compatible your are with all your friends. Guess what, if they are actually your friends, you already should have a basic understanding of your compatibility(true compatibility, not which cartoon character are you compatibility) with them.

I don't want to enhance my sex life, nor am I looking for hot singles on the web in my area. I don't need viagra, and I don't have wrinkles that need hiding. I will not change my status every time I eat a meal, and I will not put pictures of what I wore today. I will not comply with this state of mind that says I have to be open with my life, that I must post everything I do to my Twitter account(which I refuse to make) and that I must make blog posts about Britney Spears and my dog. If I want someone to know what I am doing, and I feel they will care, I will call them or meet them in person and carry on a conversation with them until we each feel that what we have to say is finished. I will not live my life through Facebook.

Stay out of my life, Mark Zuckerberg. May you lose your billions as quickly as you made them.

Re:Yes, make it more like Facebook

[Sarten-X]

I'm not so concerned about privacy, but I agree:

I have basically quit using Facebook, because it got too annoying to spend thirty seconds daily clicking all the buttons to reject the little mini-games. I'm not impressed that they want to duplicate this idiocy.

It's just painful

[quibus]

In my humble opinion, MySpace is just too painful to be true:

1) it tells me to install Flash, while I have it installed and working fine on other sites (using even proprietary Flash 10 on my Debian amd64 box)
2) it doesn't have a single way to give feedback to the administrators of MySpace (e.g. for issue 1)
3) it's a pain to the eyes to see most MySpace pages. Things are messed up, bad color schemes, hardly any well-thought about layout.

Who needs MySpace?

Unfortunately, many music composers seem to like it... :(