What do you get when
you mesh Spotify, Instagram, Pandora, and your favorite flavor of social news
articles into one? If played right, it could be this year’s biggest social
network extravaganza - and don’t call it a comeback. I am not ashamed to admit
that I am one of the seemingly few people I know who are currently using The
New Myspace, a heavy
attempt at a revitalization-non-revitalization of a social network aimed for a
more cozy and pleasant experience, not only for your average social networker,
but also for the aspiring and established artists of the world.
At first glance, The
New Myspace was very confusing. Even after skimming the built in tutorials that
the website offers you after first login, I still found myself questioning
“where do I find [this] or [that]?”, or even “how do I go back to my own
personal page?”. This is where I see positives and negatives. The New Myspace
offers a completely different interface and navigation than most of the social
networks I’m used to. For instance, most of the scrolling comes from going left
to right, rather than up or down. Unless you’ve moved to Windows 8 as your
primary operating system, this is already a pretty big mind muscle to exercise.
After time, however, I started to enjoy this more. I feel this offers a cleaner
user experience, and less loading is involved than usual. Will people adapt
well to this though? The first thing that comes to mind is the seemingly
endless rants I find on my Facebook new feed when the company makes even the
smallest tweak to their interface. To get past step one, I feel that the future
users of The New Myspace need to keep an open mind, and be willing to want to
find out the answer, even if the end result means finding out how to complain
about it on the site itself.
So let’s get to
features. What makes The New Myspace better than the existing competitors?
Well, besides a different and arguably better interface, there are tons of
great features packed within every area. Let’s start with the best - music.
Isn’t that what Myspace is all about anyway? I remember a time when I could go
to Myspace to stream any and every song I wanted right then and there. And
then, seemingly out of nowhere, Spotify came into existence. Spotify has a
great niche to getting the music you want hear without going through tons of
overly extravagant and disgustingly colorful ads about acne, and The New
Myspace definitely took notes. When searching for music, movies, people, etc
all that needs to be done is typing what you want. Where? Anywhere. That’s
right, no search bar or button necessary. There is no specific place you have
to be to search for whatever is on your mind. Do I like it? I love it. This
takes getting used to, but I feel overall is a wonderful concept. When it comes
to your mind, type it out and find it that second. The music library available
for streaming on TNM seems endless, and it was very difficult for me to try and
find someone who didn’t have accessible content on the site, even if they
didn’t have their own dedicated page. With music, you have the ability to
create your own “stations” and “mixes”, which are essentially playlists stored
within your account. You have the ability to share these mixes with other
users, and the creation, addition, and editing of your mixes appears in your
connections news feeds. So far, I’ve had no problem using TNM as a pretty easy
replacement to Spotify.
Another great feature
I love about TNM is the way you see and read news, in which they call their
“Discover” section. From the get-go, you have the ability to decide what you
want to see news about and what your interests are. This combines those
interests and puts in into one news feed that you can scroll through. You also
have the ability to break your news feed down to only see one section of whatever
you may be interested in looking into at that time. I’ve found the articles
have been a bit limited from time to time, but I’m also considering how new the
social network is, and I only expect the “Discover” section to grow bigger and
better as time goes on.
So what about the
social part? After all, if you’re only going to use The New Myspace for yourself, what’s the point
of it being a social network? Photo, video, music, and events are as you’d
expect. You can upload or create all of these items separately and put them
into different “mixes” (equivalent of albums or folders) in which other people
can like and comment on. And don’t fret myspace users, you still have a “Top 8”
and “profile song” to show off who you know and your emotions for the day or
week. You even have the ability to upload a bigger and higher definition
picture, equivalent of Facebook’s “cover photo”, which, in my opinion, looks
much nicer on TNM. And if you thought they haven’t borrowed enough ideas up to
this point, when initially connecting to a new song, artist, album, or other,
you have that ability to do so via an icon represented by circles (thanks,
Google+)! Chat is also available to any users who appear as “online”, and
notifications can be found at the bottom of the screen, represented by... wait
for it... a flag icon.
My concluding
thoughts : The New Myspace is in no way, shape, or form original. Nearly every
aspect of this social network is “borrowed” from an existing social network or
service. The combination (and if you want to be nice, we can call it
“collaboration”) is what makes the experience great. All in all, I love using
The New Myspace, and I would absolutely love for more people I (and others) know to get on it to
continue the experience.
So here is the big question
- “Is The New Myspace right for me?”. My answer? It depends. If you enjoy
keeping up with media and news, streaming music, seeing who is having what for
lunch in picture form, a more suitable an all in one solution, TNM is amazing.
What I ask you to consider - “Am I patient enough to use it?” Can you “tough it
out” to train your mind to think differently about how you use a social
network? If so, I highly recommend giving it a shot. Just like every social
network, The New Myspace’s future depends on your willingness to join and use
it.
-Todd-
