Meet the New Myspace

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Myspace announced a new brand, beta website, and a suite of products that together redefine the company as a social entertainment destination for Gen Y. Myspace is creating a rich, highly-personalized experience for people to discover content and connect with other fans who share similar interests. The entertainment experience will span music, celebrities, movies, television, and games and will be available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events.

With young Hispanics, 16 to 25, making up 18 percent of the U.S. Gen Y population and approximately 20 percent of Myspace users, the redesign will be particularly attractive to the fast-growing bicultural young Hispanic market segment. Hispanic youth are characterized as the country's fastest-growing market segment; early adopters to social media; trend setters; and technology savvy, and the new Myspace content mix speaks directly to their entertainment interests.

"This marks the beginning of an exciting turning point for Myspace.  Our new strategy expands on Myspace's existing strengths - a deep understanding of social, a wealth of entertainment content and the ability to surface emerging cultural trends in real-time through our users," said Mike Jones, CEO of Myspace.  "Myspace is unique in that it is powered by the passions of our users, who program the site by expressing interests, sharing tastes and knowledge around particular topics, and scouting out up-and-coming subcultures. This is the just the first step, and there will be many more features, programs and improvements to come."

Specifically, Myspace will provide people with the ability to:

• Discover and engage with Myspace's broad array of programming, including originals, exclusives and content from around the Web.
• Express, collect, and display their creations and interests on their profiles and through sharing tools.
• Connect to other fans with similar tastes.

Myspace will also focus on promoting curators - a subset of its audience whose reputation and knowledge around particular entertainment topics and emerging cultural trends make them uniquely influential - by supporting them with the resources, tools and platform to expand their reach within the Myspace community.

Newly Designed Beta Site

Myspace has completely rebuilt its website, with a new visual identity and product features that put content center stage. From the color palette to the way the site is organized to the improved navigation, everything has been redesigned to help people easily find relevant content.

The redesigned Myspace welcome page showcases fresh content as it bubbles up across the beta site in real-time. Additionally, once a user logs in to Myspace, the page will instantly populate with content based on the individual's interests, creating a unique, contextually relevant discovery experience.

Registered users can now also toggle between three different views of the homepage, each specifically designed to display their stream in the way that resonates most. These include:

• List view: Traditional view
• Grid view: A magazine-like format
• Play view: A video format that allows users to watch, forward, and resize their updates to full screen

To complement the online experience, Myspace will soon release a mobile version of the beta site, accessible on any mobile browser. A new Myspace app for iPhone and Android devices will follow later this year.

New Products

Myspace has released a suite of initial features that empower people to discover, collect, and display entertainment content, while also offering tailored recommendations. These features include:

• Topics – Myspace features more than 20,000 entertainment-focused, dynamic pages organized around topics. These pages provide a centralized location to view aggregated information about specific subject matter from a wide variety of news sites and blogs including MTV, Los Angeles Times, Access Hollywood, New York Times, Village Voice, and Just Jared.  
• Content Hubs – These comprehensive entertainment destinations are specifically dedicated to movies, television, and celebrities. The pages combine programmed editorial with trending articles that feature news, videos and photos from various content partners. Additionally, each individual article within the hubs recommends related content and Topics. Hubs focused on games, comedy, sports and fashion will be revealed in the coming months.
• Personalized Stream – The new stream automatically learns what to feature based on a user's preferences and habits, so they see more of what they love and less of what they don't.
• Recommendations – This feature recommends relevant topics and other fans based on algorithms that learn the type of content a user views, listens to or watches and from whom or where they discovered it.  
• 'Right now on Myspace' – This feature shows trending content in real-time on Myspace, helps fans find recently added music and videos, and lets them listen or watch right from the interactive chart. Myspace uses these trends to inform recommendations that promote discovery and engagement.
• Discovery Tab – This always-accessible tab combines videos that friends are watching with what's trending in real-time on Myspace. Scroll to the top of any page, and the new Discovery Tab drops down as a horizontal film strip.
• My Stuff Tab – My Stuff is an easy way to see all that's personal to a user – their profile, photos, videos and uploaded content, structured as a drop-down menu with different content areas.  
• Badges – This feature recognizes and rewards curators and fans for their social activity around entertainment topics on the beta site and promotes them with badges – graphic icons that appear in a user's stream.

New Brand Identity

Myspace has also introduced a new logo that captures its revamped brand identity and values. The bracket in the logo represents a space where people can express themselves, enabling users to personalize the logo and make it their own – just as they can throughout Myspace.

The newly-designed Myspace begins rolling out today in beta and will be available to all users worldwide by the end of November. New users will have immediate access to the beta site. For more information, please visit www.myspace.com/newmyspace.

About Myspace

Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events. Myspace is also the home of Myspace Music, which offers an ever-growing catalog of freely streamable audio and video content to users and provides major, independent, and unsigned artists alike with the tools to reach new audiences. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA and is a division of News Corporation. (Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV)

SOURCE Myspace