myspace is back... and this time it's serious
The new look myspace.com was revealed on Wednesday 12 June and features a slick new home page with some pretty sweet features, something that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering king of cool Timberlake was involved in providing the “strategic vision” for the site.
The general spotlight of the rebooted site, say the Vanderhooks, is to bring the focus back to the artists that once embraced it and once again mould it into a hub of musical culture.
Rather than competing with the likes of Facebook and Twitter for direct social popularity, the web page centred its developments on furthering musical discovery and providing artists with more analytical data regarding their songs, something Tim Vanderhook believes to be vital in kickstarting the progress of the project.
He told Time Magazine: “Today more than ever there’s this need for a creative ecosystem that kind of caters to the creative community and that’s both a social network and the streaming services attached.
“For us when we looked at it, we really talked to a lot of artists and … they all said, `I use all these various platforms but none of them really do what we need.’ What they really needed, they explained to us, was a home.”
“We think the creative class is about 38 million people in the United States and growing every single day. By really servicing that group, we think reaching out to one level past that – all of their fans and the creative consumers that like this type of entertainment – we think are going to be critical to our success.”
The company have also launched a new iOS app along with their latest announcement, which sees the site take a bigger interest in mobile usage, something that could be vital in a time where the online streaming industry is growing more and more competitive by the day.
“Everyone had a lot of fun on Myspace at one point,” added Chris Vanderhook. “It’s easy to kick it and say, oh, yeah, Myspace sucks now, but everyone had fun on Myspace. It’s just that they didn’t keep pace with technology and didn’t keep up with the times.
“To the average person out there they think you’re totally nuts, but no, I don’t think we’re crazy to be honest.”
The CEOs have spoken and the site is up and running. There are some pretty flying features, but at the end of the day, it will be overcoming the stigma that surrounds any fallen social website that remains the main challenge.
We’re on board though, and with Justin Timberlake always available for advice, there is every chance that Myspace could be back on the road to rock your body in the near future. No apologies for the pun. At all.