myspace - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

Social network MySpace unveiled the first stage of its redesign yesterday, starting with a new look for the homepage.

Having been one of the more cluttered sites around, MySpace was certainly due for a revamp. So has it improved?

MySpace has teamed up with three of the four major record labels, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal, to make their catalogues available via MySpace Music.

MySpace has announced a new targeted ad platform on the social network, which looks like a version of Google AdSense for display ads.

The system, SelfServe, is aimed at small businesses, politicians etc, and will allow advertisers to create and target display ads, as well as providing analytics tools to track their effectiveness. 

MySpace has joined up with Google for the launch of its OpenSocial platform, which aims to create a common platform for developers to create applications for social networks.

Bebo also joined in with OpenSocial yesterday, while LinkedIn, XING, Friendster and Orkut are already on board. The big question is whether Facebook will decide to join Google's initiative.

The recent redesign and introduction of 3rd party apps may be too little too late for MySpace as many users have jumped ship, including me.

Google has thrown down the gauntlet to Facebook with plans to compete with the social network’s hugely popular software development platform.

The devilishly cunning but widely expected move - coming just a few days after Facebook’s strategic partnership with Microsoft - will see the online ad giant allowing developers to build apps and syndicate them across different social media sites.

But besides showing how far he was prepared to go to appear in touch with MySpace's yoof audience, and being pretty embarrassing, is this a big deal?

The data shows that the amount of UK web traffic retailers receive from social networks increased by 153% in the first nine months of this year.

MySpace will be launching a platform for outside application developers in the 'next couple of months', according to Rupert Murdoch and MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe.

As predicted, Murdoch announced the plans during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday, saying MySpace would begin by offering a directory of widgets that have been created for the site.

LinkedIn will open up to application developers but in a much more limited way than its rival Facebook, according to CEO Dan Nye.

The business-focused social network announced plans to create an open platform for developers earlier this year, but Nye said LinkedIn wanted to avoid some of the more frivolous applications that have been created through Facebook's API.