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MySpace is back, again. But this time, it realises how horrible it used to be — and almost everything old is gone. It’s a totally fresh start. Unfortunately, New MySpace is like Old MySpace in one very important way: It’s still stupid.
I was invited to use New MySpace before it opened to the public. This meant there weren’t very many people on it. Reviewing a social media site when it’s closed to almost all seven billion living humans is sort of akin to reviewing an empty bar or vacated theme park. Still, although it’s possible that people will join en masse and create some kind of ineffably cool atmosphere, everything you’re about to read is about the fundamentals of New MySpace. Things that won’t change no matter how many people do (or don’t) eventually sign up.
This is MySpace’s third life. It’s like some tortured science fiction character trying to escape the cycle of miserable reincarnation.
When MySpace began, it was bad, but it was massively popular, because no one knew any better. Then Facebook happened.
In its second life, MySpace’s new corporate owners tried to switch on the bilge pump with a tacky redesign that fixed none of MySpace’s underlying flaws and put not even a dink on Facebook’s sheen. It bombed.
Now, with the almighty power of Justin Timberlake jolting through it, MySpace wants to be something completely new. Not a Facebook could-have-been. Not A Place for Friends. Something completely new. And because it used to command the attention of millions upon millions of people, once upon a time, we’re going to pay attention to this experiment at least out of nostalgia. One last chance.
There’s too much to do on the New MySpace. Spotify-style music streaming, YouTube-style video streaming, pseudo-tweets, a Faux Facebook News Feed, all swirled together. But unlike the services it copies and attempts to blend, there’s no clear way to use New MySpace. It goes in too many directions at once. When you sit down in front of it for the first time, you’re lost.
There’s a news feed that’s sorta like Facebook’s, showing you the latest things your friends have done — songs they’ve played, videos they’ve watched, musicians they’ve liked. But it scrolls sideways. And it’s jittery.
There’s a catalog of streaming music — with all major labels onboard — but no coherent way to browse. You can scroll (sideways) through your friends’ playlists, but it’s a slow, clunky process of wading through giant thumbnails. You can search, but that brings up an artist’s catalog, unsorted, with a mish-mash of “related artists” thrown in the mix. The entire audio component is a visual headache.
The basic motivation for using New MySpace, as far as I can tell, is to make your news feed of stuff-being-watched-and-listened-to as vibrant as possible. You can “connect” to “friends” and “artists,” and in turn, assorted blips from those people will appear on your feed. Then you can click on them, presumably finding stuff you wouldn’t have otherwise, and enriching your life beyond measure. But it just doesn’t work like that. It’s never clear what exactly you’re sharing, who’s going to see it, or why.
I uploaded a photo of myself on vacation this past October. Since MySpace intimacy is asymmetrical, more akin to Twitter follows than Facebook friends, I don’t know who’s seeing me on a mountain. If I click on the picture, there’s a little orb icon next to it. If I click that — hoping for privacy settings — I’m told I have “no connections with this entity.” What? Which entity? The mountain? Myself? You don’t want existential crises when you click things on a social network. You want easy functionality. If I hover over a person’s name, I don’t want to see a absurd venn diagram displaying their “affinity” (for what? for whom?). For every ounce of good intention New MySpace offers, there’s a pound of bad design and confusion.
New MySpace looks very nice at a glance. The colours are pleasant, the typography is charming and modern, and there are plenty of high-resolution pictures to gawk at. There are even some very clever design choices: If you start typing from anywhere on the site, the entire window will convert to an enormous instant search screen. It’s fun.
None of it comes together. Nothing works the way it should. Nothing is easy to find, be it Madonna or your neighbour. None of the songs stream with the fidelity of other services, and all of the videos look like blown-up tiny YouTubes. None of your favourite bands make it easy to follow them. None of your favourite non-musical figures make it easy to share in their cultural wisdom. Nothing is easy to find. None of New MySpace’s features work well with the others. Nobody will have the patience to scroll through their New MySpace news feed — even in closed beta, mine is already overwhelmed by visually-chunky updates that make skimming impossible.
The sad thing is that the New MySpace is just not fun to use. There’s no reason to use it anyway. It’s a cobbling-together things that don’t belong together but have been roped into being neighbors. Is it a social network? Not really, and if so, it’s a bad one. Is it a music discovery service? Maybe, but it’s like looking into the wrong end of a telescope. Is it a photo sharing site? Haha, no. Is it Twitt — no. And yet it resembles these things.
No. New MySpace offers nothing. If you want the friend stuff, use Facebook. If you want the music stuff, use Spotify or Rdio. It’s just not any better than what you already have.
Video edited by Michael Hession. Music: Doodler’s End Loop by Upright TRex.
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Aren’t Social networks dead yet? People will have to get fed up of being needy bitches some time :\
yer.. facebook is less a social place now and more of a “oh look a funny picture/video” place. it also houses the soap box worriers who think that posting a page long comment about how war is wrong will make a difference and its policed by grammar Nazis WHOM i hate.. lol!
but its a handy tool still for getting together in large numbers or sharing info on groups etc and its become a habit. turn on the net and first thing you do is check facebook, then emails then facebook again before doing what you did.. myspace must be dead.. it must? this mighty powerful tool that is the internet and what do we use it for really? really?
Porn and cat videos.
Amen to that!
Not so fast amigo, I still like to knock one out to people’s Facebook profile pictures.
If Myspace just focused on Porn and Cat Videos it would have a billion users overnight!
It is an interesting point, maybe social network was the wrong term to call them, maybe they never really existed. Don’t most people use Facebook for comms, and business use it for marketing – and both of those uses have nothing to do with the site being good or workable, that personal and business use is purely based on user numbers which was a result of facebook’s early focus on Universities and then graduates.
Myspace has always been used for music marketing until soundcloud and others did a better job of that, it wasn’t just facebook that screwed myspace but parallel music services that all plugged into facebook, and made myspace pointless to use for music promotion. And Google+ is used mainly to make fun of Apple maps. It seems that the market is about niche networks for content we are focused on rather than a social network.
So a overhaul of Myspace should target a niche, take a small music genre and focus on being the destination if you are into that, so if they had of focused on EDM or something, then that is a big highly focused market that is easy to target and bring into the fold – sites that focus on being the worlds number 1 of everything are silly, they will never be that and fail at being 100%, but getting 100% of a niche market and building from there is workable.
I’d much rather use the new Myspace than Facebook, just sayin!
I would rather live in a world without justin buttface but its just not fair!!!
Im going to go look at it, see the pros and then even if its better use facebook as that is already fully loaded and working and has everyone on it etc…
Yeah it doesn’t appear we’re going to be escaping from Facebook any time soon.
I have the new Myspace and agree wholeheartedly with this review. The site is just way too confusing, a classic example of style over substance.
I get basically everything I want from G+ and Twitter. I hate Facebook with a fiery passion and only stick out a profile for career networking and self-promotion (and possibly to lech on pervy pictures). Twitter is great for big news events but my feed is way too cluttered and to such a degree it’s essentially past the point of tidying.
Giz needs to mention Google Plus more. It’s the shiz these days and getting upgrades and improvements fast.
Hmm… I haven’t used Facebook properly for about 3 years (keep going back to see if it’s got better, but nope), but had to go on my partners to do something for her the other day.
Some of your issues with MySpace actually perfectly fit how I felt with Facebook.
For instance:
“there’s no clear way to use New MySpace. It goes in too many directions at once. When you sit down in front of it for the first time, you’re lost.”
Yup. I had no idea where to go to do anything. Finding a friends details should ‘not’ have been that hard.
“None of it comes together. Nothing works the way it should. Nothing is easy to find”
That sounds like Facebook too.
“Nothing is easy to find.”
3 years ago when I gave up using Facebook, I couldn’t even find my cousins on Facebook. My partners account found them and friended them straight away, but still I could not find them! WTF is the point of a social network where you can’t find people you know! Yes that part of the experience was 3 years ago and things may have changed since, but that was 3 years ago. What will new MySpace be like in 3 years?
“Nobody will have the patience to scroll through their New MySpace news feed — even in closed beta, mine is already overwhelmed by visually-chunky updates that make skimming impossible.”
I can’t be arsed scrolling through my Facebook feed. Nothing is in order, it’s full of posts from apps that I don’t care about and have not installed and the groups I have liked don’t get their posts on my feed as they now have to pay to promote them to their likes (which also pisses off my partner who has a Facebook group and now only about 30% of her likes see her posts.
“The sad thing is that the New MySpace is just not fun to use. There’s no reason to use it anyway.”
Can you seriously say Facebook is fun? They way people use it, it’d say the reason people still use it is that it’s more an addiction and something they feel they can’t leave in-case they miss out on something.
Finally you said:
“everything you’re about to read is about the fundamentals of New MySpace. Things that won’t change no matter how many people do (or don’t) eventually sign up.”
But then state:
“None of the songs stream with the fidelity of other services, and all of the videos look like blown-up tiny YouTubes.”
Aren’t these the sort of things that quite often get better after release? Most sites that offer music and video streams start out being poor quality and it’s the sort of thing that sites can easily improve on and I’m sure when lot’s of people are using the service they will do.
and “None of your favourite bands make it easy to follow them. None of your favourite non-musical figures make it easy to share in their cultural wisdom.”
Is this an actual issue with MySpace or the people using it? If the later, then that will also improve when more people start using the new MySpace. Most bands or services aren’t going to jump on the MySpace bandwagon properly until they see people using the site. When they do their integration into the system ‘should’ start getting better too.
Sounds to me like this article has been written by a bit of a Facebook fanboy.
Would be interesting to read a review from a disheartened Facebook user (plenty of them now-a-days) or perhaps a comparison review of the 2 systems by someone who doesn’t use either.
Sam, let’s get some perspective here. Were you an original user of Facebook? Unless you were a student in 2005, probably not, but if you were, you would surely remember what a horrible mess it really was.
It was completely dreadful.
Point I’m making is, this is a closed release version of the new MySpace. It’s new. They haven’t finished it, and there will no doubt be countless revisions of it in the coming months and years.
Not everything will be spot on – as a web developer myself I can’t tell you how impossibly hard it is to get something bang on right for everybody the first time. It’s impossible.
You’re killing off the new site before you’ve really even given it a chance.
Will it be for everyone? No, of course not, but your notion that it offers “nothing” is ridiculous.
People need to stop slamming everything down like this. Give it a chance, it may just surprise you.
And frankly, anything that puts even a small dent in Facebook, for me is good news.
I should add (I can’t edit my comment) that I am actually on the new MySpace. I do share some of your grievances but I’m willing to give it a chance, and overall it’s just nice to be trying something new and different.