Hacking MySpace

Myspace have recently re-vamped their old profile look into a clean, customizable, “web 2.0″ style in their efforts to keep the website’s modern, hip kind of feel to attract more of their biggest market (teenagers).

Now as I expressed last week I did have some concerns (and still do) about this new profile. I mostly had concerns about the code changing and so in turn old myspace codes (for example all the codes on my website) would not work anymore, but another concern I have is that Myspace seems to want to become facebook, they seem to be copying quite a lot (e.g. applications, and now some say Myspace are taking this “web 2.0″ look from facebook too) and I don’t really like facebook so Myspace becoming like them annoys me slightly.

One good thing is that you do not need to switch to this new profile 2.0 style and will remain like this for a long period of time (Myspace’s official blog mentions years). This is big news for all the Myspace resource site owners out there, at least Myspace aren’t completely taking our market away, they are only denting it. Not needing to switch also means that those who like their page as the old ones were, so that you could customize using CSS anywhere you want on your profile and all that jazz can keep them that way. Personally I think that different demographics like different types of sites, for example a young demographic will more likely enjoy a graphically intense site, yet an older demographic likes the structured look where it’s concentrating on the content a lot more. Also, vice versa; those who like to have Myspace do the customizing for them can choose to use the new “web 2.0″ profile.

Some more good aspects of this new Myspace profile style are that it increases the load speed of your page (because it’s coded much better), drag and drop modules (pretty much the same idea that the BBC have used on their homepage since it’s redesign), new (and easier to use) privacy control settings which allow you to control who can view each and every module on your profile, and the better profile customization features. Oh and something for the programming people out there - Myspace is now fully W3C compliant! Who would have thought that Myspace would ever be fully W3C compliant?

I think that I should note that the new profile 2.0 style is not going to take anything away from users in their ability to control the page via CSS, they just need to put that CSS into a certain part of their profile editor so that it will work. Although the old codes won’t work, there are new ones that will and I for one plan to look into the new profile a lot more and will more than likely make quite a few tutorials about it, either here or on my website.

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