Opinion BY Armin

Myspace Remains Immortal

Like Jason Voorhees, Myspace is back from the near-dead. Or, well, it’s going to be back. Soon. You just need to give them your e-mail at a new landing site to get an invite to join. After a brave, Hail Mary-like push in October of 2010 to reboot the social networking site with a new identity and functionality under the auspices of News Corp, Myspace crashed badly and was picked up by Specific Media, an interactive media company that “enables advertisers to connect with consumers in meaningful, impactful and relevant ways.” They were joined by Justin Timberlake, who was reported to “take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for [Myspace] moving forward.” The new creative direction and strategy are here. Yesterday, Timberlake introduced a preview video to his 13,000,000-plus Twitter followers.

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Opinion BY Armin

Myspace Goes Blank

Launched in 2003, Myspace — capitalized as MySpace at the time — became the de facto social networking platform for youngsters attracting 1 million users in its first year, 5 million a few months later, and over 100 million users amassed to this day. With the ability to customize their profile pages, users unleashed a fury of apocalyptic, senses-attacking, browser-crashing designs laden with unicorns and party pictures that eventually became a user interface punchline. No Myspace story is complete without the mention of Facebook which took on the reigns of the social network kingdom and became the Myspace Killer. More than killed, it wounded. And it has taken Myspace three or four years to recover, or at least attempt a recovery. And it starts this week. Myspace announced a complete redesign of its platform with new features, interactivity, and bells and whistles for its users along with a new identity.

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