
Myspace previews complete redesign - michael_fine
https://new.myspace.com/
======
lordlarm
As a computer scientist and an Opera user this actually insults me:
<http://i.imgur.com/7k0bN.png>

Ironically Opera was the one who proposed the <video>-tag which this site uses
for it's rotating LP, in 2007. [1] Way to exclude users.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo.3E_element)

~~~
luriel
The Web 2.0 craze is leading us back to the _"Best viewed with"_ insanity of
the 90's.

And is only going to get worse, with WebGL is not just _"Sorry your browser is
not supported, please download a different one."_ , but _"Your video card
drivers are not supported, buy new hardware and/or install a different
Operating System"_

~~~
jenius
So what exactly do you propose? That we just halt all technological innovation
on the web so that people that don't feel better about having old browsers
and/or computers?

This is a ridiculous idea, and a ridiculous comment. I'm a web developer and
I'm so excited about making awesome things and the fact that the web is
evolving and enabling us to do this, and share our creations with the world.
People like you and comments like this drive me crazy.

That being said, I don't think that you should just put up a blanket disabled
site announcement when it's not necessary (as is the case with opera here),
but if your computer or browser is actually missing capabilities because it's
too old, that's too bad - you just don't get cool things. Upgrade or move on.

~~~
luriel
> So what exactly do you propose?

Sane and simple standards that can be implemented in any platform without
requiring hundreds of man years of effort.

Nothing done in the web today is particularly technically advanced, we are
about the same UI level as standard apps were more than 10 years ago (hell, I
doubt you can build a photo manipulation app today that can compete with where
Photoshop was 10 years ago).

Most of the complexity burden the web has is purely gratuitous and product of
how flawed the standards it is built on are.

How JSON replaced XML is a good illustration of what is the right direction to
go. Now if for example JavaScript was replaced with something considerably
simpler, like, say, Scheme, instead of trying to bolt even more OO-crud into
it and turn it into another pseudo-Java, that would be another good step.

There is little doubt the DOM and CSS could be dramatically simplified without
reducing functionality, same goes for HTTP (as a recent post to hacker news
illustrated).

~~~
creat0
"most of the complexity burden of the web is purely gratuitous"

To think that some people are actualy getting paid to make submitting and
retrieving data using web overly complicated and annoying is one of those
things I try not to think about. The standards idea clearly is not working if
it is being interpreted as a mandate for needless complexity to keep web
developers entertained. Instead we hear web developers complain that standards
are being ignored because some browser will not support their desired
gratuitious complexity. I would say they've lost the plot but I'm not sure
there ever was a sane plot to begin with.

------
chrisacky
Just watched the video [1] in entirety.

One point, you can tell this is a total work in progress/concept, and that the
UI is also most likely staged at this point.

(I make this observation based on the fact that _every_ post had "12
Connects", "3 Comments" and "2 Shares". Surely if you put this much effort
into production of a video you would change these numbers?)

Anyway, features which I picked up from the video...

\- Photo Sharing/Uploading

\- Heavy Emphasis on Music

\- Insights/Stats for presumably Bands

\- Radio

\- Some weird feature called "affinity" that matches your online identity to
Justin Timberlake?

In the final shot, It also looked like Instagram filters were applied to
_every_ profile picture?

As expected, MySpace is clearly placing a heavy emphasis on a community driven
around bands and music. But, I just fail to see how they are going to get a
strong user base, just considering most/all bands are content and happy with
Facebook and integration with the vast supply of Band Related apps...

[1] <https://new.myspace.com/play>

~~~
DigitalSea
The company I work for (Josephmark) was hired by MySpace to redesign the site
and create something radically different. The interface you see was created by
a few talented designers, the video you say was staged is definitely not
staged. What you are seeing is what the new MySpace will look like when it's
ready to launch. Yes, the site is focusing music - the new MySpace is going to
be a social music platform because it has always and still is MySpace's
biggest strength (they have access to more music and videos than anyone else),
when you have more music than Spotify it would be crazy to try and target a
different niche. it has been mentioned by MySpace themselves in interviews
about the new site it's a music product. MySpace are not trying to compete
with Facebook, if anything their new competitors are now Spotify, Last.fm and
Rdio. The very fact you can login with your Facebook is proof of this enough.

The new MySpace is very much a music product. It has a fresh, crisp interface
and it's smooth, sexy & fast. It's the fastest and best performing MySpace by
far. What you see is the impressive work of the MySpace development team who
have done an amazing job at taking ambitious designs and turning them into
something captivating and interactive.

Don't judge the site people until you try it. From a developer perspective, I
think most people here on HN will appreciate how technologically advanced and
smooth the new MySpace is which has been built from the ground up when it's
launched. As you can see it's more than a mere re-skinning of the old MySpace
code base.

~~~
ThomPete
I have to say as a fellow designer.

Great work!

It looks stunning I hope it works as well as it looks cause that is probably
more important than the visual aesthetics.

~~~
DigitalSea
Thanks mate, I'll pass the praise on to the design team. I'm on the dev team
here, so my involvement hasn't been as great as theirs. The response from the
video seems to be pretty positive, hopefully everyone is just as impressed
when the final site is ready for the public to use. I am a bit biased here
because I'm proud of the work my colleagues have done, but it definitely is
one of the nicest looking music products out there.

Visually I think it's rather pleasing. It's different and the horizontal
scrolling might not be everyone's cup of tea, but screens seem to be getting
wider so it makes sense that sites start adopting a more horizontal oriented
approach to web design to accommodate larger resolution screens.

I do find it kind of ironic the design team use Mac's and people are saying
that the new MySpace looks like it got inspiration from the Windows 8 Metro /
People Hub, haha.

~~~
ThomPete
I think many mac geeks (myself included) are secretly loving the MS design
aesthetics given the heavy focus on typography :)

~~~
andersbreivik
Now to track down and murder the designers of Ribbon and we can start building
a new UX utopia >_>

------
aw3c2
Latest Opera and I get insulted:

 __ _Not so fast!_ __

 __ _Our superpowers have detected you're using an outdated browser. That must
mean:_ __

 __ _a You don't use the Internet very often._ __

 __ _b You're at your parents' place on the PC they bought in 1996._ __

 __ _c You work for the government or a big corporation._ __

 __ _There's still hope. If you answered a or b, all you need to do is click
on one of the beautiful icons below, follow the instructions and you'll be
enjoying the new Myspace in a jiffy._ __

~~~
jacobr
Works fine when you "Identify as Firefox"

~~~
jarek
Yeah, " _d - You don't usually jump through hoops to get a demo website
working in your perfectly capable browser_ " must have been left off the list
accidentally.

------
iamben
The preview looks great. I just don't understand why anyone would come back to
something they've already moved on from to do things they're already doing
elsewhere.

That said, I genuinely wish them the best of luck! :-)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
There's a burgeoning disenfranchisement with Facebook IMO. People for whom
Facebook is getting tired and old and for whom the interface is a drag may
well be perfectly placed to jump [back].

This does look like they've refocussed back to the roots (?) of MySpace and
gone tailored things towards bands/music again.

~~~
iamben
Bands was what MySpace did best. It'll be interesting to see if it can lure
any back (or the audience for the bands - chicken, egg?).

Absolutely agree with the Facebook disenfranchisement. I often wonder if FB
has just got too 'bitty' - would people prefer something like the super simple
Facebook of yesteryear?!

------
nostromo
If this was billed as "FooBar: Justin Timberlake's new music social network" I
would have signed up for an invite instantly. However, "sign up for an invite
to MySpace" seems uncompelling. It'll be just as hard for them turn around the
name MySpace as it would be for a night club that has become passe.

(Maybe it's just me... I also signed up for an invite to WireDoo.)

~~~
grandalf
myspace is now a retro brand, isn't it? Those who never left will be like the
people who stuck with Apple through system 7.5.x through 9.x...

~~~
Apocryphon
Same with the new Digg.

------
mratzloff
They've been working on this for awhile. I interviewed at Myspace about 3
years ago (mostly for the hell of it) and they were talking about the
foundation for this interface. Their back end, from what I could tell, was a
mess: C#, Ruby, Java, PHP, some ColdFusion still around...

These poor guys were working long hours. There were hundreds of employees, but
they couldn't turn Myspace into something that 5 talented guys could make in 6
months. It was clear to me that there were a lot of politics lurking just
beneath the surface.

~~~
Zimahl
Yikes, 3 years? From scratch is where they needed to start from and it sounds
like they couldn't pull the trigger until recently.

FWIW, I think the interface looks great. However, I'm definitely not the
target audience - I'm not young, nor hip, nor am all that into music. I have
however done my share of user interaction and development and it seems cool
AND functional, which is quite a feat in itself.

------
espadagroup
I'm actually pretty impressed with this both in their direction and design.
Focusing on the creative producers was what they should have done in the first
place.

~~~
syassami
My thoughts exactly, this is something very refreshing/futuristic and after
showing to friends who are both artists/non-artists they love the new UI.
Congrats myspace.

------
ary
Myspace previews design concept video. I'll believe this interface in a
browser when I see it.

That said, it's a nice concept.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
In a desktop browser? I can believe it. It's the Pinterest interface except
horizontal. I see gradients, html5 video, opacity, position fixed. The only
unbelievable thing about this video is the lack of loading time to load any
content.

~~~
pawelwentpawel
So now everything that is aligned in a grid is a Pinterest interface?

~~~
mertd
To me, Pinterest interface means random pictures and captions displayed in
arbitrary sizes and order. When watching the preview video, the first thing I
thought was "horizontal Pinterest".

------
at-fates-hands
The Opera landing page is not just disappointing, it's downright offensive.

As someone who never used MySpace and is a fleeting Facebook user, I would've
been interested in seeing the new product and willing to sign up and see if
it's improved at all.

As it stands right now, not only am I not going to use it based on this
stupidity, I'm going to make sure none of the people I could've brought over
from Facebook don't either.

Way to alienate people before you even finish the new design. Bravo. JT must
be so proud.

~~~
robinduckett
> fleeting Facebook user

> Opera user

You're clearly not the target demographic though, right?

~~~
at-fates-hands
I might not be the target demographic, but when you're trying to revive a dead
horse, you would think your target demographic would include people who use
any browser, not just the ones you approve of.

If there's one thing I do know, Opera has a very large, very loyal following.
Not sure what motivated them to simply discount these people as possible
users. Not smart IMHO.

------
djt
This looks like a great way to be a social network for bands/DJs/music and
potentially monetise around the sale of music/festivals/marketing-music.

bands actively use Myspace still, that is a massive captive market. Not sure
why this is getting such negative press here on HN since I'm sure Patio11
would agree that this is genius on their behalf.

The fact that the music industry is in turmoil could make for a great
monetisation strategy for Myspace. Potentially with a much greater Profit than
Facebook (ie Myspace may capture the music marketing/distribution problem
which is still a multi-billion dollar industry). Think Google Adwords for
music discovery.

I wouldnt be surprised if Justin Timberlake has an album coming out which can
be downloaded through his Myspace when it comes online.

~~~
tonster
I completely agree. Bands have never left Myspace, and it seems finally
Myspace will try to really incorporate bands/DJs/Marketing campaigns into the
social network. I imagine monetization would come rather easily with this as
well.

------
jrajav
First thought: Ruh-roh, someone caught a bit of the Metro square-spam fever.

Second thought: ... Okay, I might be a little bit excited to see how this
plays out.

(Particularly like the searching ideas.)

------
matmann2001
The song is oddly appropriate.

    
    
      Who am I to say I want you back?
      When you were never mine to give away.
      I was waiting for a long, long time for you to feel the same.

~~~
earbitscom
I know the guy who picked the song. He was still securing it Friday and
telling me he _had_ to get it, that it was perfect. I agree. ;)

~~~
ldng
Ok, I'm not the only one who though this song was choosen on purpose. And
indeed it was.

Edit : who's the band/singer ?

Edit 2 : my bad, just had to look closer at the player :-)

It's Heartbeat from JJAMZ

------
GuruShastry
Where it says "Paris" on the photo album, its actually a photo from Berlin.

------
binarysolo
Reminds me of similar design sensibilities to Microsoft Windows 8 (Metro). Is
this kinda stuff in vogue these days?

~~~
jitl
Yeah. I'm a UI Designer and I really like the aesthetics of this sort of
interface, although I'm not totally on-board on reducing the total content on-
screen in favor of endless scrolling GIGANTIC TEXT and images.

~~~
warfangle
The big thing about it is the horizontal scrolling.. that works really well on
an ipad, but not so well on the screen. This is definitely a tablet-oriented
design ...

~~~
timfrietas
Can you explain more why? My monitor is 16:9, my iPad home button suggests is
should be held 3:4, and at best is 4:3, which is not as well suited for side
scrolling as modern monitors, which are wider than they are tall.

~~~
warfangle
It's as big of an issue on my OSX touchpad devices, as I can scroll sideways
with the same gesture I use to scroll vertically. But on any device where my
primary HCI device is a mouse, it requires finding the horizontal scrollbar
and click-dragging it. It's also not typically what people expect out of a
website outside of the touch realm, which breaks a pretty primary rule in UI
design (don't present the user with something they don't expect).

------
iblaine
As a former MySpace employee I hope the redesign is worthwhile. As a former
user I am not holding my breath. I certainly hope they threw out 100% of all
the old code and started from scratch.

~~~
doomslice
We did.

------
electic
This site seems overly designed. It's so badly overly designed that my eyes
hurt. That is why sites like facebook and twitter do well, they have
predictable design that prevents a lot of rapid eye movements from top to the
bottom of a screen to take in content.

I'll pass.

------
nashequilibrium
Wow! If these guys manage to rebrand and capture the entertainment segment,
that will be huge. They need to focus on being fun and forget everything
facebook or LinkedIn and this will allow them to innovate. Also they should
hit the under 24yr old market hard as this is where a lot of market share lies
for new innovative products and they will have less bias against the MySpace
brand name. If they succeed students will be covering it as a case study in
business schools.

------
xpressyoo
Love the "subliminal" soundtrack of the preview "[...] If you break my heart a
2nd time ..."

------
swalsh
The site is really sexy, i like it. However I don't think it matters. Social
media is built on fads. Myspace had its day, there once was a time when it was
the "cool thing". I wouldn't be surprised if a few more users come back.
However i'd be really surprised if it was any significant amount. The site,
just like Digg, is a zombie. It is the living dead. You just can't make
zombies into productive members of society again.

------
canistr
The sideways scrolling seems awkward for desktop-use with mice. I'd imagine
it's more of a tablet-centric app that is Windows 8-metro inspired.

------
viraptor
I'm surprised the TV part didn't get advertised yet. It's probably the most
exciting part of their new service, but so far they're keeping it pretty quiet
(apart from places where they try to recruit new people).

If they can pull off all the changes: metro ui, new pinterest-style network,
music distribution, tv integration... this may be an interesting time for
Facebook.

------
jaysonelliot
As a UX designer, I was fascinated by what was actually happening behind all
the fast edits and hip soundtrack, so I stayed up far too late last night
writing this 4,000 word deconstruction of the new demo:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4572608>

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Audio pinterest, sweet!

~~~
alid
I agree! And the mixes feature looks cool. They're definitely plugging a gap
in the music market.

------
yakshaving
Blows. My. Mind. Amazing, amazing work.

I wish we could see this level of design work for products that aren't for
hipsters and celebrities though.

From a look at Josephmark's webpage, it looks pretttty similar to We Are
Hunted (<http://wearehunted.com/a/#/emerging/>) and The Global Mail, which are
their works. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

MySpace exec: "Nice work on WeAreHunted! Can you replicate basically the same
site with some venn diagrams?" Josephmark: ::shrugs:: Sure, how much?

All cynicism aside, it doesn't really matter where myspace got the idea, the
video actually looks like this is executed pretty well. I hope myspace will
resurrect into something cool and useful to people.

Congrats to the design and dev teams!

------
jmohsenin
Can't believe they spent all this time on a desktop redesign. Should have done
mobile-first.

------
jaredcwhite
Social networking completely rethought in 2012 design language. I like it.

~~~
jrajav
What Microsoft would like 2012 design language to be, at least.

------
joshmattvander
I am actually curious and almost excited to see this come to life. But one
mistake they are making IMO... Sticking with the MySpace branding.

------
narendranag
This should be very interesting: I think kids between the ages of 9 and 15
have started to see FB as the social network of old people (millenials and
X-ers) and are spending way more time on Pinterest etc. And Pinterest doesn't
give a complete social experience. The new myspace just might become the
social network for gen Y (or Z or whatever alphabet we have for them :)

------
palderson
An interesting note to this is that there weren't any ads on the site, which
is not a surprise given it's a promo video.

However, given the vertical and horizontal scrolling, there's not really any
way to include static sidebar ads the way Facebook does. It'll be interesting
to see what they do around advertising on the site.

------
sabret00the
What I find interesting here is that it seems to have gone from generic social
media site to glorified music promo site and now back to generic social media
site? I thought they were going to buy soundcloud and really attempt to push
the music/artist interaction boundary. Oh well, I guess we'll see.

------
aelaguiz
This excites me. I would love to see some serious heat in the social
networking space, some competition might break the innovation logjam.

We can stop competing on how many people can fit in one vid chat and start
actually adding some value again.

Here's hoping there is an app eco-system with serious social channels for
mobile.

------
pawelwentpawel
Really nice concept. I liked the map especially. I wonder about the navigation
- it would be probably cool to include a lot of keyboard shortcuts scrolling
up and down.

Imagine if facebook would suddenly come up with a such a drastic redesign.
Half of the users would probably have no idea what is happening.

------
fotoblur
I am glad to see designers pushing for the horizontal scroll. IMO, the
everlasting vertical scroll always bothered me as unnatural. Kudos to MySpace
for pushing the envelope on the redesign. My visits to Facebook won't be the
same ;).

------
kyt
Too little, too late. Their brand is tarnished forever and they'll never
recover.

~~~
wmeredith
Bullshit. Go ask a twelve year old who's going to start creating their online
persona this year what Myspace is. They won't know what you're talking about.

~~~
astrodust
Then their eighteen year old brother will flick them in the ear and call them
a loser and a noob and they'll quickly learn.

~~~
zalzane
When you were 12 years old, did you go out of your way to tell your
parents/brother that you had a myspace?

~~~
astrodust
MySpace was an exclusive club for "99-year old girls" to fawn over their
favorite bands, or for older boys boys to post pictures of "hot babes" to
impress others in their age group.

I'm not sure it ever matured from there.

------
sodafountan
Did Microsoft acquire Myspace? Looks like the (formerly known as) Metro
interface, which is actually really smart, wouldn't surprise me in the least
if Myspace got big again.

------
robryan
Nothing to lose I guess. Looks to have some interesting ideas.

------
mitjak
Does anybody except for musicians use Myspace still? Regardless of the answer,
I'm still not sure why artists would continue using myspace in the first
place.

~~~
glenntzke
This honestly makes me glad I regained access to my Myspace account and I'm
looking forward to trying it out with my bands' pages. I can't think of anyone
(bands included) actively touting their Myspace pages but it looks like JT's
influence in the company may pay off afterall.

------
hhudolet
What's the new tech stack? Old myspace was asp.net, and I still see response
headers with IIS 7.5 and asp.net 4. Wonder what's new architecture!

------
Dystopian
Aside from worrying about some of the UI/UX elements - I think it looks
beautiful - hopefully it's a touch more intuitive in real world use :-)

------
mhd
Now do livejournal.

------
brador
Looks like the new digg but with side scrolling...

------
benguild
Whoa.

~~~
bicknergseng
No kidding. Gonna take me some time to grok this one. My immediate reaction
from only the video is that it looks beautiful but far more complicated than
FB or G+ or something. Still, remarkable transformation.

------
rsobers
I'm impressed. It's like rdio meets Facebook meets Pinterest. I actually love
it. Makes Facebook look stodgy. Plus fucking 1.

------
twodayslate
Looks very metro.

------
Apocryphon
It seems promising, but isn't Latest the unholy lovechild of Facebook's News
Feed and the controversial Timeline format?

------
KeyBoardG
If they are going to refocus on music, they need to make some kind of
acquisition to make us care. SoundCloud maybe?

------
MojoJolo
It looks like it got a Windows 8 UI feel to it. Well, it looks good!

But is looking good can make an impact?

------
joss82
Wrong choice of word on the front page.

They told the most numerous user that she is ""just"" a fan.

------
jamgraham
Nice artist dashboard - Good to see focus on the artist too.

~~~
campuscodi
Yes. Quite a good redesign.

------
thecoffman
This seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic...

~~~
astrodust
MySpace is already at the bottom of the ocean collecting barnacles. This is an
effort to salvage the wreck.

------
VeejayRampay
We need a million more social networks.

~~~
joshmattvander
Not a million... Just 5

------
marklindhout
Myspace.

Now does EVERYTHING.

