Rupert Murdoch, who paid almost $600 million for the collection of empty electronic streets strewn with tumbleweeds that is Myspace, is in Australia this week keeping all the senior staff of News Limited on their toes. Tone Deaf’s spies inform us that one of his greatest business disasters, Myspace, is never mentioned in his presence, however he must have decided to try and extract some cash out of the white elephant because conveniently, this week also marks the beta testing of the ‘new improved’ Myspace. We could share the reams of press guff News Limited wants to shove down our throats trumpeting how much better it is, but in essence what they’re saying is that they’ve cleaned up the pigsty of a layout and have tried to incorporate a lot of elements of Facebook and Twitter to make it an easier to use multimedia platform.
The reality? Well, gone are a lot of the garish pimped profiles that gave viewers involuntary convulsions and flashbacks to ‘Nam, and instead they’ve replaced it with a simpler more sober layout. So far so good – except that they neglected to consider the interface with a million add-ons and customisation facilities. So for example, a band who has spent $1000 on a swish profile now suddenly finds their layout is screwed and ads, videos and every other plug in imaginable are often partly obscured or even disabled. Sure, it’s in beta testing mode, but at first blush it would appear that Myspace management deserve to be in Rupert Murdoch’s ’s office receiving a severe spanking.
