MySpace Continues Redesign Initiative

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MySpace, the world’s most popular social network, today announced the launch of a series of high profile user interface changes that include the site’s home page, navigation, profile editing, search, and MySpaceTV player. Today’s announcement — part of a year-long company initiative to redesign and rethink the core functionality of the site — will empower the site’s global community to more intuitively navigate throughout the site and better communicate with their family and friends around the world.

“A year ago we set out on a path to rethink the way people interact with the fundamental features of MySpace,” said Tom Anderson, President and co-founder of MySpace. “These changes lay the groundwork for what is to come — by the early fall we expect to reveal an entirely new and remixed MySpace that deepens the engagement of current users and attracts new ones.”

The changes will roll out throughout the week are based on results from multiple in-home usability studies, online surveys, impromptu testing, focus groups, and user’s messages and comments sent to Tom’s profile. MySpace is working with Adaptive Path, a best of breed experience strategy and design firm based in San Francisco, to usher in some of the user interface changes.

Splash Page Re-launch: As the entry point for the site’s global users, the splash page is the gateway to the site and the primary log-in page for the community. On Wednesday, June 18 users in the United States will see a branded splash page takeover sponsored by a major advertiser and on Thursday, June 19 users will see the entire new look and feel which features a more intuitive and simplified log-in. The new splash page features a larger creative palette for advertisers, allowing for a flexible platform to put a large percentage of the page into a brand – an unparalleled opportunity for brands to engage users at the gateway to their MySpace experience. It also highlights new content – news, blogs, video, and music, including “top 10” charts from the MySpace community.

New Navigation: Also on June 18, MySpace will unroll new site navigation sparked by user demand for easier access to key communication tools on the site such as mail and core content such as music and MySpaceTV. The redesign provides a consistent and easy way to get from one place to any other place on MySpace and contains a drop-down menu housing additional functionality including Karaoke, Games, and Celebrity.

Profile Editor: The new profile editor will unveil a host of new personalization options for users making it easy for the community to customize profiles through a selection of styles and granularly detail their sections from a theme library offering color, borders, and images to choose from. Users with more advanced coding skills will still be able to fully customize profiles using HTML coding.

New Search: On June 16 MySpace will roll out new searching capabilities with a consistent, clean user interface. MySpace is working with Lucene Open-Source engine and community to enhance search capabilities, marking the first time MySpace has contributed to the Open-Source community. Search will have improved filtering by location and added relevancy to search algorithms. Search results will be tabbed, with five tabs based on the top five search categories; People, MySpace site searches, Web searches, Music and MySpaceTV. With almost 20 billion searches on MySpace this year, MySpace is ranked third in total number of searches by any site.

MySpaceTV Player: Built internally, the MySpaceTV player has been redesigned for an incredibly rich user experience and will roll globally to the community on June 17. The new player includes scrubber, time-stamps, volume memory, and new menu systems which encourage the user to share and interact with content – and search within the player. The player fully utilizes Flash 9, with a true full-screen mode, and it supports HD. The new player offers a more flexible advertising platform with multiple formats (pre, post, ticker, companion banners) and advertising providers. The global launch will include international, language specific players (e.g. Japan) and will initially be released on all of MySpaceTV, with embedded videos to roll out iteratively.

The announcement of the global redesign initiative comes on the heels of the high volume of features that MySpace has ushered in over the course of last six month including the launch of a new UI for photos & friends, the MySpace Developer Platform, Friend Updates/Subscriptions, the Data Availability initiative, MySpace Messaging with Google Gears and new channels such as Celebrity, Games and Karaoke.

About MySpace

MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. MySpace has created a connected global community by integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums. MySpace’s international network includes more than 20 localized community sites in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Latin America, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, India, Japan, and New Zealand. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS)(NYSE:NWS.A)(ASX:NWS)(ASX:NWSLV).

(a) Among the top 2000 domains comScore Media Metrix, May 2008. For more information on comScore Networks, please go to http://www.comscore.com.