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September 26, 2012

MySpace gets a major makeover

Myspace attempts to come back to life with a new design that has similarities to Facebook, Windows 8 and Pinterest.

By Tineka Smith

Almost a decade ago, Myspace was once the cream of the crop when it came to social networks. The company is fighting to stay in the social networking game by rebuilding its site from scratch in an attempt to gain the millions of users it has lost over the years.

The completely revamped profile page shows all your activity including mixes you might have created. The profile has a horizontal picture-themed set up where comments on each photo are openly displayed, similar to Pinterest.

Twitter redesign

Users will be able to scroll from left to right rather than top to bottom like most social networks.

"We’re hard at work building the new Myspace, entirely from scratch," said Myspace on its teaser page. "We’re staying true to our roots in one important way-empowering people to express themselves however they want. So whether you’re a musician, photographer, filmmaker, designer or just a dedicated fan, we’d love for you to be a part of our brand new community."

To preview a video of the new Myspace design, visit the new.myspace.com website.

MySpace was bought at the height of its success by NewsCorp for $580m in 2005, but after the launch of Facebook the site has seen its numbers steadily decline.

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After 10 million users left MySpace in a single month, NewsCorp put the MySpace up for sale.

The site was then bought in 2011 by Justin Timberlake and Specific Media for $35m, despite News Corp originally seeking $100m for the site.

Myspace joined the ranks of Facebook and Google in May this year when the company was slapped with a 20 year audit by the FTC for privacy violations.

According to the FTC, The social networking site provided advertisers with the ‘Friend ID’ of MySpace users. The Friend ID uniquely identifies each user’s profile page on MySpace. This allowed advertisers to locate a person’s MySpace profile in order to obtain personal information including a users’ full name. Advertisers then had the "capability to track users’ viewing habits across different websites using tracking cookies."

The FTC said that MySpace did not keep its promise that it would not share personal user information without permission first.

"The MySpace privacy policy promised it would not share personal identifiable information without giving notice and gaining permission from users."

The privacy policy also stated that information used on the site would not individually identify users to third parties, which the FTC says MySpace violated in providing user Friend ID’s to advertisers.

In the settlement, MySpace has been ordered to not misrepresent its privacy policies along with implementing a comprehensive privacy program in order to protect consumers’ information.

Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.

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