Once the unrivalled heavyweight of the social networking scene, MySpace continues to suffer a calamitous decline in traffic, with a dreadful redesign doing nothing to stave off the mass exodus of users.
Sackings galore?
As revenues tumble, owners News International – run by the shudder-inducing Murdoch empire – look set to be readying MySpace for a sale.
It’s now being reported that ‘significant layoffs‘ could be coming up soon, with rumours suggesting that as much as half of MySpace’s 1,100 employees could soon be receiving the Order Of The Boot.
Awful redesign
MySpace’s recent attempt to stem the tide of departing users with a major design overhaul and a new focus on the 13 to 35-year-old demographic was so badly executed that we expect it actually made things worse.
Fast fading
As well as publishing Wirefresh, we also run busy London club nights and although MySpace remains a useful resource for checking out and contacting new bands for our nights, it feels like it’s reaching the end of its life.
In the last few months it’s becoming an increasingly frustrating experience, with the revamped site proving a horror to navigate, and the freshly introduced half-ton of pointless graphic fluff slowing the experience down even further.
Cut the crap
We hope that whoever takes over MySpace has the sense to bring it back to being a great resource for bands and promoters, and that means stripping out all the bolted-on the crap and focussing on what the users want.
We fear there’s not much chance of that happening though, and with no serious challengers on the horizon – Apple is surely having a laugh with its ludicrous puritanical service, Ping – that can only be bad news for musicians everywhere.
Thanks for trashing it, Murdoch.
