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September 13, 2007

MySpace Getting A Little Less Chaotic?

Michael Arrington

41 comments »

Interesting blog post by MySpace co-founder and president Tom Anderson this morning. He’s proposing a new default layout for MySpace pages that has significantly better organization of user information, and moves from a two column to three column approach.

So we’ve been working on a new home page design here. Thinking of launching this in a few weeks, but I wanted to see what people thought about. Take a look and tell me what you think

The page certainly has more of a Facebook look and feel than the existing default theme, with clearly delineated content areas and modules, and a new horizontal navigation bar across the top.

Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows users to customize the CSS of their profiles. If you really don’t want to leave MySpace but love the clean lines of Facebook, there are templates to customize MySpace to look just like Facebook.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. MySpace Getting A Little Less Chaotic?  »TechAddress

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

  2. share.websitemagazine.com

    September 14th, 2007 at 6:48 am

  3. Profy.Com

    September 14th, 2007 at 7:12 am

  4. Justin Tadlock » Facebook-Mimic Theme Gets More Attention

    September 16th, 2007 at 2:41 am

  5. Make Your MySpace Profile Look Like Facebook 2: An updated, revamped, and revitalized Facebook theme for MySpace

    November 26th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

  6. Facebook Gets More Orderly: Multi-Tab For Profiles | DistrictSource.com

    February 27th, 2008 at 7:57 am

  7. Facebook reorganizes profile pages | 325i.org

    March 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am

Comments

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  1. barefootmeg

    September 13th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    “significantly better organization of user information”

    this has been, imo, the biggest pitfall of myspace. i don’t care how many teeny-boppers use the site. i can ignore them. but i can’t ignore the fact that the usability of the site is hindered by it’s cluttered design. (and the ads flashing about in the middle of the content areas drives me nutty as well.)

  2. Ed

    September 13th, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    First thing going out in mine is the bulletin space thing

  3. Calvin

    September 13th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    reminds me of ICQ website 8 years ago.

  4. Mikew

    September 13th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    Yes - the ICQ web site was a serious disaster, and, like myspace, achieved so much success that people couldn’t help but continue to use it despite its [lack of] usability.
    http://web.archive.org/web/200.....b.icq.com/

  5. myspace

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    i can not tolerate myspace, well, its more the myspace users that i can not tolerate, most pages are out of wack, i cant tell what is what someitmes.
    i have 1.5mb download speed and sometimes it takes minutes to download just one page, not to mention that my browser gets confused at some of the content on some of these pages. god knows how many times my browser crashed on myspace.

  6. BeingParents

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Facebook is the second most visited social network and that is a good enough threat for Myspace to improve their interface. To stay in the games we must seek continuous improvement. Users love simple interfaces.

  7. Don Wilson

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

    Blind negative opinions and comments about MySpace in 3, 2, 1……

  8. Arnie

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

    Judging by the 150+ comments on the blog it seems that the majority of MySpace users seem to like the new design.

  9. Ryan Merket

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Wow, it only took them 10 years to learn information heiarchy, not let’s see how long it takes them to learn contrast.

    Note to Myspace: HIRE A DESIGN FIRM.

  10. Phillip Nguyen

    September 13th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    I saw Tom’s blog and love the new home page design. They launched new mail pages recently and last night I saw new photo pages briefly. I’ve enjoyed MySpace for 3 years and appreciate the new design.

  11. Danny

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    This is a new default HOMEPAGE, not a new default PROFILE page as you suggest. The homepage is the page you get after you log-in, so this is not the default public facing profile page (that does need lots of work too).

  12. coda

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    Too little, too late.

  13. Word Hugger

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Agreed with 12.

  14. Matt

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    Still looks quite messy to me.

  15. Music Man

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    Somebody inside MySpace really needs to tailor specific designs for the creative communities - bands, musicians, artists, etc. This one size fits all approach blows, especially for bands.

    Good reporting once again, FacebookCrunch.

  16. Matt

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

    just like facebook? uh, not quite. ;)

    somehow even when someone tries to make ugly-old-myspace look like almost-sexy-facebook, it still looks like garbage! lol (although some other links through that one sport nicer myspace pages than the facebook pile.)

    also, way to throw “FaceBook” into a post about something that was surely loosed to bring about some attention for MySpace… (I would expect nothing less form Arrington himself, lol) ;)

  17. Tokyotronic

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    Any change will be an improvement. This is long overdue.

  18. Andrew

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    Mike, what do you use to take screen shots? Yours always look good.

  19. Marcos

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    150,000,000 profiles using the old layout - now that’s what I call a legacy issue!

  20. bob cobb

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    no API no care

  21. Kanute

    September 13th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    Well i think it’s just time they give it a real face lift.

  22. Sam Donaldson

    September 13th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

    you seriously think they’re not working on their api platform??? of course they are.

  23. steve ballmer

    September 13th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    Jjust wait until you see MSNspace! WOW!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  24. pwb

    September 13th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

    Hate to tell everyone, but MySpace is successful *because* of its (supposedly) crappy design, not in spite of it. The mass actually *likes* chaos.

  25. Yelp Sucks

    September 13th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    sorry guys, facebook is a freakin organization mess. I can’t find a thing on it and the font is so freakin small you can’t read a thing.

    MySpace is much more user friendly and easier to use than facebook.

  26. Joe

    September 13th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    As Danny said, this is the HOME page, not the PROFILE page, and for better or worse, the existing HOME page had been very successful. So.. it didn’t look pretty. That being said, it was usable and unique.

    What’s material here IMO is the prominence of status (a relatively new feature for MySpace and a major “app/activity” on Facebook) and the introduction of freestanding compose (akin to Facebook). Furthermore, they are enhancing the viewing of newly added content and sections (books, videos, ringtones, etc)

  27. David Mackey

    September 13th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    The cleaner organization is a great move for MySpace, and something I’ve actually been noticing. Now if they clean up their ads they might be getting somewhere.

  28. Rob

    September 13th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    The article is cool but you guys are supposed to be up on all this tech stuff yet you still don’t know……

    Tom Anderson is NOT the co-founder or President of Myspace. He is a publicity figure thats it. Myspace is owned and run by NewsCorp. and was started by one of the internet’s oldest spam companies…not Tom Anderson.

  29. Mike Dragan

    September 13th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    Well - it certainly has some delimited focus points and some clear interaction areas but c’mon - it still looks like hell.

    Probably having such a huge userbase they can’t change too much or they’ll be having users running away.

  30. Zane

    September 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am

    @Rob: Actually, Tom Anderson is both president and co-founder of MySpace. Also, pigs do not fly.

    MySpace not ugly? Say it ain’t so.

  31. Chipshop

    September 14th, 2007 at 3:43 am

    I agree with 25.
    Just try adding and viewing photos :o

  32. Omadsense

    September 14th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    give me a break - myspace is trying to look like facebook and if you notice the layout helps them bring the ads that are at the bottom [ rarely noticed ] up to the top of the page.
    if they want to do something for it’s users stop being a pain in the a**. They block videos players that are not google and youtube - my newsfeed video does not lead visitors away from myspace it keeps them comming to my myspace page..

    example: http://presidential-election-news.blogspot.com/

    they should think of the user and not themselves for a change…..

  33. Water Subject

    September 14th, 2007 at 8:04 am

    will the old custom layouts, themes or whatever they call it work with new design?

  34. digitalTRAFFIC

    September 17th, 2007 at 2:36 am

    cool news - time it had a base facelift - although the customisation feature was good on myspace - the facebook page does look abit messy - especially when you add the extra modules like the music ones - hope they add more tracks to the music player on myspace too. agree with above - tends to be users posting huge images in comments that distort the pages - I delete these of course…anyhoo - where else can i promote my music….. :-)

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