MySpace users have been noticing a new button in their Nav Bars this afternoon, allowing them to switch between the site’s traditional ‘Full’ view and a new view, called ‘Lite’, which strips out the customization and media that the site’s profiles have become known for. When reached for comment, MySpace confirmed that they have been quietly testing the ‘Lite’ feature in the US today, explaining that the product is primarily geared towards members who don’t have access to broadband connections, which is a common issue with international users. The product has been available in India for the last few days, and will roll out to US members later this week (with more international support coming in the following weeks).
MySpace has long placed a heavy emphasis on allowing users to customize their profiles with media-rich content (a feature that has been occasionally abused by some over-zealous users). Many MySpace members include YouTube clips, music playlists, and flashy photo slideshows on their profiles, which can make pages nearly unusable when attempting to browse MySpace from a slow internet connection, especially since many of these files have to load from servers beyond MySpace’s control. With MySpace Lite, these issues shouldn’t be a problem.
Among the elements that are excluded from Profile Lite are the ‘About Me’ and ‘Who I’d Like To Meet’ sections, user interests, comments, and third party applications. That may sound like a lot, but users will still be able to view most personal details like relationship status, friends, and status messages. The company says that when Profile Lite is launched for everyone, it will also include the site’s music module (which presumably isn’t as bandwidth-heavy as video content), but that most other media will be excluded. Future versions of Profile Lite may include the ability to customize exactly which profile boxes should be shown in ‘Lite’ mode.
MySpace may be marketing ‘Lite’ profiles towards international and dial-up users, but it has one potentially more far-reaching implication: it gives users the ability to browse MySpace with a single, unified interface. One of the long-standing advantages Facebook has had over MySpace is its clean, structured appearance – Facebook allows a small degree of customization, but users always know where to look when they want to find a member’s bio or their list of friends, which isn’t always the case on MySpace. Granted, some MySpace users are drawn to the site specifically because they want to be able to load up their profiles with movies and photos, but most of us would at least like the choice to ignore this content. Now, MySpace is giving us a way to do exactly that, even if they aren’t too eager to promote it that way.
MySpace taking a step towards a more Facebook-esque network?
Interestingly enough, Facebook is becoming more like MySpace, and Myspace more like Facebook.
Perhaps social networking equilibrium is approaching?
Equilibrium definitely is in the horizon, hype can only go up to a point…
I nearly Facebooked this year but the TOS flipflopping and redesign held me back…Myspace is my online home!
Chris and Tom are way cooler than Mark and the gang
It will be the blandest supernova ever known.
So is Obama everyone’s friend like Tom now?
@wtf
I had to block Barack. He kept trying to befriend my wallet.
trying to be more like facebook, which may help them retain music (and film and comedy) fans who use myspace just to discover and interact with their favorite acts.
but i don’t see how this will solve myspace’s bigger problem: it’s much harder to interact on myspace than facebook. bulletins and comments are often ignored, there’s much more noise, and the navigation is trickier. overall, it’s far more time efficient for someone to post something on facebook and get a response than to put it on myspace.
I stopped using myspace because it would crash my computer every time i tried to look at a site or see musicians site. It was just impossible to use.
Not seeing it yet, could you post the direct URL to the Lite Button (If there is any)
It was temporarily active today (at least for some users) but it looks like they’ve taken it down for now. Should be back up for all US members this week. If you’re in India, I believe it is live now.
I am in the Bay Area
Which has better food and really nice buildings!
Just part of the natural evolution. Good article and good on Myspace for seeing they need to evolve. All sites will have to.
Can you verify your last claim regarding all? Not the DMV.org
So you are saying your ID is fake then.
This is a nice addition. Looking forward to checking it out.
I know most people here love bashing MySpace, but I have to admit that the site has been improving in its appearance and functionality.
Those that say MySpace pages are clustered with junks should be bashing their friends who built the page, not the company that gave them the freedom to do so.
Glad you now have the option to turn off peoples god awful impossible to read profile pages.
One of the reasons I shut down my MySpace was because too much customization was possible, and like Jason says, many pages take forever to load.
I think this is a smart move for MySpace, especially since they have been losing users to Facebook. Although their security features and the ability to slow down predators is far behind Facebook’s, MySpace “Lite” is a step in the right direction.
@Mike from your profile I can see “in a relationship”. It seems the “April Fool” post helped after all
Meanwhile, I think myspace cannot claw back to the top it is too late. It is now about Realtime 3.0
LITE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED ON MY MYSPACE AND I HAVE A BROADBAND CONNECTION. IT WON’T TURN OFF DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO HELP?
lol
Bravo, MySpace! I’ve been waiting for this for awhile. I saw it working today for a few minutes. Whenever I hit a profile that was taking to long to load, I just clicked the “lite” button and I saw a simple profile, devoid of 10 YouTube videos that was slowing it down. Nice move!
Perhaps if a few members actually learned to USE IT BETTER.
^Barack Obama^ HOO BOY, Natasha!
Great idea!
I personally am not a big fan of over-customized pages some people have.
“myspace makes attempt at becoming usable”
well i’m clearly out of the loop
The question is when will the ‘Lite’ version become the ‘full’ version of Myspace.
I think this is the best new feature they have released in awhile. I am so sick of profiles that have auto play on them. Drives me nuts!
Mark, you could always go into your account settings and take away the auto-play feature on people’s profiles.
MySpace ‘Lite’ was very much needed. I have landed on some jumbo pages in the past.
It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still not enough to lure me back to their site.
If access to broadband is more common in international markets, why are they testing in the United States? That’s real smart.
I meant “less common”
I think you mean, “unmost common”, sir!
Erm, didn’t it say the tested in India too?
But the customisation is one of the things lots of people like about MySpace over Facebook …
Except people don’t like it and so are moving to Facebook. All my friends tell me how much they prefer the clean look of facebook to myspace.
How old are you and your friends?
This is pretty awesome. They definitely seem to be pushing things forward. Profile 2.0 finally makes it possible to customize a page like a web developer and this new option perfectly satisfies the ones who don’t want to see any kind of customization.
Glad to see MySpace is still fighting the fight. I really hate Facebook and I definitely wouldn’t want it to be the only viable social networking option.
Thanks MySpace for understanding you users that live on the other sides of the world (outside US). Even with 3.5 MB 3G broadband, it’s crawling like a snail to open up every pages in Myspace or Facebook from my country – Malaysia
Facebook like..
But the customisation is one of the things lots of people like about MySpace over Facebook …
They don’t ahve a customization feature. It’s a bug in which you can insert CSS code which overrides the look of the page.
Can’t they start with having a “Style” text field so you don’t have to paste the code in the “About me” field?
There aren’t any good class or ID tags so it’s a HELL to customize the page to make it look good. MySpace is a huge pile of crap.
You haven’t been to MySpace lately I take it? Like, within the past year or more?
Profile 1.0 structuring was updated to include new class names for each section.
Profile 2.0 uses both class names and ID tags, plus, there is a “CSS” section. Profile pages today are much easier to customize than profile pages of two years ago.
bah, it’s still US-only
If You Clicked The Lite View And No Longer Want IT yuh wanna go back 2 full view how do you do that
Interesting. Never thought I’d see the day
Very cool change. They keep innovating.
I don’t like MySpace – haven’t ever when they launched. Facebook is good and they were definitely better before. I guess with all my contacts on Facebook, migrating is difficult. It was all about users network. For me it has grown on Facebook and unless it becomes a pain to use, MySpace wont count me in.
Michael is my favorite top friends.. like, omg EVER!!
…and it’s about time myspace implemented this feature. It was one of the things that I loved about Virb.. yeah, virb, anyone remember that? Didn’t think so.
Yep, Virb is actually still going strong, they recently relaunched.
Is it really? I mean don’t get me wrong I love Virb and used to be a evangelizing the service after it just came out but… it seems nothing much is going on there, not even after the relaunch.
Feels like an ueber pretty palace with no one in it.
Is Facebook now worth 40 billion and myspace only 5 billion? http://iamned.com/blog?
myspace seems to be going the wrong way to me. They need to figure out how to revamp the entire system without killing the user base. i don’t even have any friends that use myspace anymore for anything other than to have a customized profile page which is usually ugly. The networking and functionality of myspace has caused most people i know to just use facebook
This finally launched in the U.S. tonight. Yay.
what if i did put lite view on and i tryed to switch it back to full but it wont let me what do i do?
Thanks for the information i never notices that option in My space…
Thank you
Damn, you are good. Yeah thanks you a lot!
Wow, been away for awhile but this is an awesome myspace feature!!