MySpace Transformation Coming?

*These thoughts are just my personal observations based on what MySpace has done recently with the acquisitions and how I see it positioning itself. Will this prediction prove itself true? Only time will tell, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on MySpace and what you think these acquisitions could mean.

Recently MySpace has been making acquisitions that seem to point to a possible transformation of the service. Since it’s inception in 2003, when eUniverse employees looked to take key features from Friendster and create a new social network, MySpace has been extremely popular. Claiming dominance in the space for many years, just recently being surpassed by  Facebook, MySpace has now been seen as the social networks for young teens and entertainers.

More recently MySpace has become stagnant, and I think that’s something we can all agree on. Many of us have left MySpace behind to join other social networks that offer more interactive functionality. Moreso, social networks themselves as transitory since we are likely to go where all of our friends are in order to connect. Right now the big player is Facebook and in the past year we’ve seen that social network make many changes not just in how it works, but also in the layout and the way it displays content. Where has this left MySpace?

MySpace acquired imeem not too long ago in order to beef up it’s MySpace music library, a move that many will say was a positive one in terms of business, but a failure in how they treated the existing imeem community. Nevertheless imeem content has been successfully ported over and MySpace music can claim a more robust listenership due to this change.

The newest acquisition is SocialPlan from Slingshot Labs, which appears to offer a much more diverse calendar planning process. The hopes is that it will create a stronger foundation for the much underused and under performing Events category for MySpace.

So it begs the question, is MySpace planning a big release of some sort? The interface and the way it display has long been something that many users would like to see change. The UI is not intuitive and the site as a whole feels crowded with little flow in the design. My thinking is that a new site debut would be amazing. Integrating all the aspects that it’s acquired and built in for a much more functional experience. This might be wishful thinking, but a redesign would be welcomed and perhaps much appreciated by the current, albeit shrinking fan base. In either case, if MySpace wants to remain a player in the social network race, it’s going to have to “go big or go home.”