Myspace (stylized as myspace, previously stylized as MySpace) is a social networking service with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and pop music singer and actor Justin Timberlake.
Myspace was launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In June 2012, Myspace had 25 million unique U.S. visitors.
Myspace was founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, and was later acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million. From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009, though Myspace generated $800 million in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year. Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. As of June 2013, Myspace was ranked 303 by total web traffic, and 223 in the United States.
Myspace had a significant influence on pop culture and music and created a gaming platform that launched the successes of Zynga and RockYou, among others. The site also started the trend of creating unique URLs for companies and artists.
In June 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1,600 workers. In June 2011, Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake jointly purchased the company for approximately $35 million. Under new ownership, the company had undergone several rounds of layoffs and by June 2011, Myspace had reduced its staff to around 200.
Website features
Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a Myspace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.
Myspace had a "Groups" feature that allowed a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups could be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group could choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join. In November 2010, the group feature was turned off; a user clicking on the "Groups" link in the features menu was led to a page that announced that groups were being revamped, and the user could sign up to be informed of when groups would come back. However, As of May 2012 it now states in the Help page "For now, Myspace groups are not available. This is part of an ongoing effort to simplify Myspace and improve the experience for everyone. Although we removed groups, Myspace is still the perfect destination to stay connected."
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| Myspace Homepage |
Since YouTube's founding in 2005, Myspace users' have had the ability to embed YouTube videos in their Myspace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new Myspace Videos service, Myspace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. Myspace users widely protested the ban, prompting Myspace to lift the ban shortly thereafter.
In early 2006, Myspace introduced Myspace IM, an instant messenger that uses one's Myspace account as a screen name. A Myspace user logs into the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her Myspace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, Myspace IM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use Myspace IM get instant notification of new Myspace messages, friend requests, and comments. Myspace IM was added as a default feature of Myspace by the end of 2009.
In early 2007, Myspace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. Myspace has been showing videos as early as 2006, but it has changed it name to MySpaceTV for a while. In 2009, MySpaceTV reverted to Myspace Video once again. Myspace Video continues to be not as popular as other video sharing sites such as YouTube, but many sites had partnered with Myspace such as Hulu to promote their media to the Myspace community.
There were a variety of environments in which users could access Myspace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that could utilize a service known as Myspace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of other members. Additionally, UIEvolution and Myspace developed a mobile version of Myspace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T, Vodafone and Rogers Wireless.
In April 2007, Myspace launched a news service called Myspace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.
Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. It has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception. Myspace Classifieds was launched right at the same time the site appeared on the internet.
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| Fox Interactive Media headquarters, 407 North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills, California, where Myspace is also housed. |
In 2008, Myspace introduced an API with which users could create applications for other users to post on their profiles. The applications are similar to the Facebook applications. In May 2008, Myspace had added some security options regarding interaction with photos and other media. Many applications that are popular on Myspace had spin off versions on Facebook. The Myspace app Mafia Wars has become a Facebook sensation as well. On the other hand, Facebook applications such as Bumper Stickers and Farmville has been used in Myspace and was popular as well. Many application partnerships such as Zygna and Slide has been responsible from creating third party apps for use on both Myspace and Facebook, along with for use in the iTunes app store.
Launched April 29, 2008, ksolo.myspace.com is a combination of Myspace and kSolo, which allows users to upload audio recordings of themselves singing onto their profile page. Users' friends are able to rate the performances. A video feature is not yet available.
Myspace Polls is a feature on Myspace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.
MySpace uses an implementation of Telligent Community for its forum system.
In 2009, Myspace also added a new status update feature. If a Myspace user has a Twitter account, the tweet will also update the Myspace status. (Facebook also has a similar feature.) It does, however, require that the two accounts be synched up together.
Status Update Moods
Moods on Myspace were small emoticons that were used to depict a mood the user is in within a status update. The feature was added in July 2007. The mood feature, as of 2010, was not included by default with the status updates, but could be shared on the homepage as a separate update. Today these emoticon moods are no longer part of Myspace at all as the new owners are focusing the website on music, entertainment, and other forms of art sharing / discovery. Users are encouraged to share their mood by attaching music, photos and art to status updates.
Profile Customization & History
Originally, Myspace allowed users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me", "I'd Like to Meet", and "Interests". Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also had the option to add music to their profile pages via Myspace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on Myspace. These two features were very controversial as profiles would often look unprofessional and music would auto play without the end user requesting it.
Today, profiles still offer much more promotional space than competing music services (the market that Myspace is competing in) Spotify and Pandora. The newest version of Myspace allows a full screen cover image with an innovative horizontal tablet friendly scrollbar, a profile default image, space for links to other online presences, a biography section, top 8 connections and other promotional tools available through the navigation rail.
Music
In late 2003, Fin Leavell encoded his personal music into a Myspace profile, becoming the first Myspace musician.
Shortly after Myspace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News and 20th Century Fox, in 2005, they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent on Myspace Music. Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, artists can upload their songs onto Myspace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lily Allen, Owl City, Hollywood Undead, Sean Kingston, Arctic Monkeys, and Drop Dead, Gorgeous gained fame through Myspace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by Myspace and many more continue to be discovered daily. In late 2007, the site launched The MySpace Transmissions, a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists.
Myspace, in 2008, redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of Last.fm and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster. Myspace music also suggests songs based on the songs you are listening to or the songs you had added to the playlist, making it a music discovery tool. The site features charts similar to Billboard charts and it keeps track of the most popular music liked by users of all genres. It also enables user to view popular music in other countries of the world, mostly in Europe and major Asian countries such as China and Russia.
With the release of the new Myspace, it became clear that music was to be one the sites main differentiators. This of course played into the sites historic strength and allowed them to compete in a niche market against Spotify and Pandora. According to Ebiz's "Top 15 Most Popular Music Sites", Myspace ranks #3 in traffic. As of December 1, 2012, Myspace received 26.5 million unique users each month. This places them comfortably ahead of competitor Spotify which only is seeing 10 million unique users each month yet behind Pandora and Yahoo Music.
Finding new music is simpler on the newest version of Myspace than it's been previously, as users simply need to start typing and the queue will recognize that a user is searching. Myspace also has a discover section with content that is ranked by popularity amongst the crowd.
Redesigns
Past redesigns
Throughout 2007 and 2008, Myspace redesigned many of the features of its site in both layout and in function. One of the first functions to be redesigned was the user home page, with features such as status updates, applications, and subscriptions being added in order to compete with Facebook.In 2008, the Myspace homepage was redesigned. Myspace Music was redecorated in 2008 and 2009, making it more like an online music store similar to iTunes and Rhapsody, along with the ability to create playlists. The use of Playlist.com on Myspace was abolished after the new Myspace music was launched.
On March 10, 2010, Myspace had some new features added like recommendation engine for new users which suggests games, music and videos based on their previous search habits. The security on Myspace was also accounted to, with the criticism of Facebook, to make it a safer site. The security of Myspace enables users to choose if the content could be viewed for Friends Only, 18 and older, or Everyone. The website will also release several mobile micro applications for Myspace gamers besides sending them games alerts. The site may release 20 to 30 micro apps and go mobile in 2011.
In Summer 2010, the color scheme of Myspace changed. The classic blue was replaced by a more white interface, to resemble the look and feel of Facebook, and to attract users of Facebook to join or rejoin Myspace. The simplification of the navigation bar also made it easier to find features quickly. In August 2010, the home page was modified to give new room for the Myspace Stream and to make it resemble Facebook further. Profile 3.0 was launched as well, which was an upgrade from profile 2.0. That enabled users to have more creativity with a simpler interface. Templates, like profile 2.0, are added too but it also enabled simpler template creation methods and module control. Building templates has become simpler; without the use of custom HTML or CSS, users can upload photos from their computers or find background images on the Internet by typing a URL, to give it more of a personal, more sentimental and individualist image than the prepackaged layout sites that were used before. HTML and CSS can be still used on the profile, but an HTML or CSS module must be added to promote a neater layout but still use the sponsored layout sites.
In September 2010, Myspace continued to work on improving the website. A photos section was added and the Fotoflexer app was added to photos. Myspace also enabled users to integrate their Myspace activity to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, to attract and show others that they are still on Myspace and to bring users back to Myspace. Myspace Movies was also added to promote movies and movie related media.
In October 2010, Myspace introduced a beta version of a new site design on a limited scale, with plans to switch all interested users to the new site in late November. Chief executive Mike Jones said the site is no longer competing with Facebook as a general social networking site. Instead, Myspace would be music-oriented and would target younger people. Jones believed most younger users would continue to use the site after the redesign, though older users might not. The goal of the redesign is to increase the number of Myspace users and how long they spend there. On October 26, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said, "Most investors have written off MySpace now," and he was unsure whether the changes would help the company recover.
In November 2010, MySpace changed its logo to coincide with the new site design. The word "my" appears in the Helvetica font, followed by a symbol representing a space. The logo change was announced on October 8, 2010 and appeared on the site on November 11, 2010. Also that month, MySpace integrated with Facebook Connect – calling it "Mash Up with Facebook" in an announcement widely seen as the final act of acknowledging Facebook's domination of the social networking industry.
In January 2011, it was announced that the Myspace staff would be reduced by 47%. Despite the new design, user adoption continued to decrease.
Contemporary redesigns
In September 2012, a new redesign was announced (but no date given) making Myspace more visual and apparently optimized for tablets.
By April 2013 (presumably before), users have been able to transfer over to the new Myspace redesign.
