Cerebra

I'm writing this post as most of my colleagues are too young to even know what is, and why the is a potentially important digital development. One of my first small jobs back in the 00s was to create a MySpace profile for a client, back then, Facebook and Twitter were non-existent in SA. MySpace was all we had, yes it was ugly, and the user experience was clunky, but you could upload videos, photos, text and audio files on one page.

Fast forward a couple of years and MySpace is the old shoe from several seasons back that gets lost in the back of your cupboard. Until today.

The web has been buzzing with the relaunch of MySpace. They've created a slick video that flips through the main new features complete with aspirational status updates and gorgeous pics. Add MySpace stakeholder, Justin Timberlake, and you've got one sexy looking launch video.

So what can we expect?

Over the past few years MySpace had become the last bastion for musicians. When it comes to showcasing and playing music, MySpace just works. Music is the only niche that the 'old' interface is servicing effectively and I'm happy to see that it looks like the new MySpace developers acknowledged this when redesigning. The music functionality is still very much front and centre and it wouldn't surprise me if we see further developments on the music front (perhaps streaming with a recommendation engine, purchasing options etc.)

The new design is much cleaner, it has been dragged out of the last decade and looks slick and functional.
They have added Facebook and Twitter login options, yes, this may seem ironic….but it means that users can pull in their existing info which may boost the signup numbers.)
In the current trend of very visual websites it looks very pinteresty indeed.
The simple functionality encourages multimedia sharing (status / pics / songs / video) the 'mixes' music option is particularly good.

I have two major questions:

1. Who cares?

Does the MySpace brand still have a place? Does it hold any weight as a brand? Perhaps they recognise that with the younger generation it doesn't have much brand equity and may be seen as a new social network.

2. Where's Tom? Who is this David Croft dude?

We'll know more as the service develops, for now I think it's nice to see someone other then Facebook and Twitter and the headlines again.
Will you sign up? Do you care?

P.S - If you have no clue who Tom is then you've reinforced some of the points in this post :)