This is soooo long overdue. Looks like Myspace contracted Adaptive Path to redesign one of, if not THE ugliest popular social networking site on the web. What a feat for these guys. They blogged about some of the project challenges (See: Rethinking Myspace, Myspace & Creative path, The Shelf-life of Social Networks) but in the end, it seems as though the redesign turned out to be one big Facebook BITE. According to Valleywag.com, “When Fox Interactive began interviewing Web designers for the job last fall, they told the candidates the main goal was to match rival Facebook feature-for-feature.” See more screenshots here, where it looks like they are also biting Youtube for their media player.
I really don’t understand the logic, Myspace. Users left Myspace for Facebook because it offered better features and because it was “the NEW” thing about a year ago. Who’s going to go back to Myspace when they aren’t offering anything new? Doesn’t make sense to me. In my opinion Myspace should be upping the ante and giving their users better, faster, and stronger features along with the new design. That just seems like a basic principal of competitive business to me. Look at Google/Gmail, they gave us a GB of email space for free while the standard was only 10-20MB. Then again, I don’t get paid 6 figures to do the research on this type of thing, so maybe I’m missing something. Either way, I don’t think Facebook has anything to worry about, especially since Facebook is also making some design improvements that I think are pretty decent.
I know it sounds like I’m all for Facebook, but don’t worry I am still thinking about deleting my account.