News Corp. plans MySpace relaunch, will 'go younger'
News Corp. plans a relaunch this year of MySpace, the social network which has been supplanted by Facebook, and will target a younger audience, News Corp.'s head of digital operations said Friday.
Facebook may have welcomed its 500 millionth member this week, but MySpace, which News Corp. bought for 580 million dollars in 2005, still has a healthy user base, News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller said.
"It's still around," Miller said at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference here, adding that the site attracts around 65 million to 70 million unique users a month in the United States alone.
Since being eclipsed by Facebook, MySpace has worked to position itself as a platform for musicians and their fans and Miller said the site intends to "go younger, go youthful" and put a premium on "creativity and self-expression."
"A little more rock and roll," he said.
"We are pregnant with product," Miller said. "It's really starting to roll out over the course of the next few weeks and well into the fall leading into a full relaunch of the service."
"It's both a usage and design relaunch," he said. "It's a whole new look and feel, and underneath it a whole new set of use cases."
Miller said more emphasis, for example, will be placed on MySpace as a destination for casual gaming.
"MySpace is a gaming platform and should be a much bigger and better gaming platform," he said.
(c) 2010 AFP