MySpace launching complete redesign next week

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 13 Jun 2008 at 10:53

MySpace has announced plans for a complete redesign next week in an attempt to widen its demographic and boost user engagement on the site.

In what it says will be the largest re-launch of a website of its size, MySpace claims it is changing its home page, navigation, profile editing, search, and MySpaceTV player facilities and that many more changes will be coming over the summer.

"This is more than a facelift; we're changing the way people interact with the site," says a MySpace spokesperson, adding that a major advertiser has signed on to take over the US MySpace homepage on the first day of the relaunch.

The main phase of the relaunch is set for Wednesday, 18 June.

Developers working on the redesign have made use of the Lucene engine and community, marking the first time MySpace has contributed to an open-source project.

Last month MySpace made its user's profile information, pictures and videos available for use on sites such as Yahoo, Ebay, Photobucket and Twitter as part of its Data Availability project.

Both this scheme and the redesign represent efforts by the social networking site to revive flagging traffic. MySpace saw a 15% drop in visitors in April this year, compared to the same month in 2007.