The New MySpace Invites Are Out // Oh Man..

Update: Don’t bother asking for an invite—as of now they’re not allowing people to send them out. You’ll have to wait in line with everyone else  Just got an email saying I DO have invites to give out. Cool! Ask in the comments.. If I have some I’ll give em out. ALL OUT of invites for READERS. The rest must go to a select few who emailed me in the beginning.

What’s the ‘Oh Man’ for? MySpace has been purchased by some company and co-purchased by Justin Timberlake. There’s your oh man. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all year, and it’s almost over. Along with this purchase comes a revamp. When you go to new.myspace.com you’ll see a form to request an invite. (It’s invite only for the time being boo hoo! and no, others cannot invite you, it’s strictly first come first serve)

I feel almost overwhelmed when I wonder what exactly to talk about. There’s a ton of awesome and innovative functionality going on here with the revamp, and so many wrongs. It’s mostly just filled with bugs, as if it’s still in its Alpha stages.

I’m on MySpace here. Add me, connect with me, whatever, Ha.

#NewMyspace

MUCH more after the break unfortunately:

Lets start off by saying that I haven’t touched my MySpace account since… A few months after Facebook launched back in February 2004. That’s eight years ago. That number blew me away when I Google’d to confirm that date. I’m sure that almost everyone I know hasn’t even thought about it until I’ve started to post about it. I will say, that once I heard Timberlake was involved, my excitement dropped by 50% and I felt almost wrong for accepting my invite and using it. I kind of feel guilty just writing this.

Complete Revamp + Features

Their Basis = Music. A few years back, (maybe more than a few) MySpace decided to completely change its mission. They went from being the most popular social network; that just happens to have music on it—to solely—a very unpopular music discovery network. They succeeded, if that was their plan. Facebook sent them packin’.

This has not changed. They’re still about 97% music based. They’re stuck there, I believe.

Band pages are equipped with a streamlined layout by album view just like Spotify, yet coined by iTunes. Very simple layout with no distractions. Band events, and all other information you’ll need including who’s connecting to them as well.

Interface. They’ve done very well in this category. They can now consider themselves unique for once. Instead of being a part of the regular 99% of websites that scroll from top to bottom—the new site scrolls from left to right. This is great for those tablet users who’re actually used to scrolling every which way they have to.

Music Bar—This is what I’ve found very annoying about this new interface. On the bottom of the screen, constantly lies your music bar with your usual Pause and Play buttons. You can’t get rid of this, it’s there for good. Every time you rollover it (which is a lot, after using it for a couple days) it expands to show your Queue, Messages, Mixes, and your Radio.

Stream + Profile—The homepage where you get all of your friends connections’ updates, and your profile, are both side scrolling. Both have infinite-scrolling. (Instead of pages, you just keep scrolling… and scrolling… Usually with a  ‘Load more’ button)

You get large icons for single posts, smaller for grouped posts such as, “Zakk listened to 8 songs by Gavin Degraw.” The stream has filters (in case of crowding, which doesn’t take much!) for text posts, music, photos, etc. Everything seems to come up in the stream. Not a move you make won’t show up on your friends connections’ feeds.

The profile starts out with a huge background image or ‘Cover Photo’, options on the left, and your information on the right panel. From there you can only scroll to the right to view all recent posts and activity. And with you as you go, is that handy music player on the bottom that doesn’t shut up while browsing, unless you tell it to. You even still get an optional ‘Top 8.’

Connections. These make is easy to interact with anything you’d like, on any page you’re on. If you’re on a persons profile page and they’ve posted a song—you can hover over the ‘Connection’ icon (the 2 rings in the corner of anything interactive) and get options on whether to Queue the song, add it to a mix, share it, or just ‘Connect’ with it. Connecting with something just means it will be added to your ‘Library’ within your profile.

Type To Search. The only really cool feature. Anywhere you are—doesn’t matter what type of page—you’re always equipped with the ability to do a general search just by typing, as long as you don’t have any other texts fields activated/selected.

It’s primary searching criteria is of course Artists, Songs, and Albums… Further to the right is finally, People and their mixes.

Known Bugs:

Music Player Rollover—If you’re actively rolled over the music player (you’ll know, when it expands) and you click on any link to a new page, it will just freeze up and fail to load the style-sheet properly. This kills me since it happens so much.

Friends Post Notifications—If I comment on a friends’ photo per say… I would expect a notification when someone posts a follow-up comment of any kind. Or I’d at least like the option. You don’t get anything. Good luck!

Back/Forward/Music/AHH—Sometimes you can use the back and forward buttons in your browser while your music continues to play. Sometimes, you just cannot. I do know that if you refresh a page, the music restarts and it counts as another play in your queue, so it will show up twice.

ALSO—Bands event listings are from ThrillCall.

Conclusion

They’ve got something good here… I don’t think it’s going to have much of an audience seeing as their excitement ended about 7 years ago, give or take. Some people will be excited, but I don’t think it will last. They’ll probably use it for a week, if that, and move right back to their regular lives.

I already feel like I’ve dedicated to much time and energy into it. It feels like I’m cheating on Facebook; although Facebook is starting to feel old now too! Maybe it has completely ruined me for other social networks, including itself. I guess it’s an abuser, and that seems like no fun don’t you agree? We will see. Good luck everyone!

What do you THINK!?