You'd have been forgiven for thinking
it was 2004 all over again this week as 'Myspace' was again the
social network on everyone's lips after the troubled site dropped a
rather gorgeous video ahead of a planned re-re-(re?!)launch in the
near future.
The new Myspace from Myspace on Vimeo.
The question is, of course, does anyone
still care? The answer? Well, if early buzz is anything to go by
then... perhaps!
It seems that Myspace is targeting,
almost wholly, the interface between social and creative, music in particular, while pitching
its aesthetic somewhere between Pinterest and Microsoft's recent Metro
designs. With the ability to link playlists with photo albums and see
who your power listeners are, alongside increased Facebook and Twitter
functionality, it will sit alongside your existing social platforms
rather than attempting to userp them wholly. It aims once again to
become the king of music discovery platforms.
The most impressive part of the video
is when the user, logged in as Justin Timberlake, searches his top
listeners to see who is listening to his songs and then messages them
directly saying 'hey guys, here's some behind the scenes pictures'. An undeniably cool feature if implemented as shown.
Is there room for it, however? Will
people actually remain beyond the initial rush to sign-up and try it
out. IT will stand or fall on whether lots of people are using it.
The user-experience will, of course, be key and the aforementioned
video makes it look as if it will be a pleasure to navigate and spend
time on. You'd hope so. Retention will be the key though. Will it be
useful? What will make it stand apart from existing tools?
Twitter, used cannily, is almost
unmatched as a music-discovery platform but to get the most out of it
requires an idea of how to use it and the effort of getting a network
going. Facebook's musical versatility has always been a somewhat
tortuous affair with third-party apps providing various degrees of
usefulness; it's never been an integrated experience. Last.fm bears a
mention, of course, as it provides a lot of the discovery data
functionality but it is functional rather than beautiful and has
never possessed the mass user-base that makes truly social sharing
viable.
So, yes, there may well be a place for
Myspace to slink into between the massed ranks of social sites that
still, even now, seem to increase every day. Though its industry
can't work out what the hell it is doing, music still drives life,
love and chatter like no other and if Myspace can create a beautiful,
functional and above all USEFUL site that pulls together the
disparate online strands once more then the future *might*
be rosy once more.
Myspace's
best asset is the years of internet real estate that it built up as
the number 1 site on the net. It still regularly tops google searches
for bands and, as such, still has its uses; priceless interms of
getting a head start but it will need to capitalise this.
Though its name is certainly tarnished
from the long years of neglect and ridicule, Myspace is still a name
that still carries weight. Its once mighty use-base might be a
fraction of what it was but make no mistake, people will want to see
what the fuss is about... the question is, will returning users still
be able to remember the passwords from their long-neglected teenage
accounts?!
