Social network pioneer MySpace unveiled a redesign on Wednesday targeting the younger “Generation Y” audience as it seeks to regain ground lost to Facebook.
MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought for US$580 million in 2005, said its new Web site and products are intended to “redefine the company as a social entertainment destination for Gen Y.”
“This marks the beginning of an exciting turning point for MySpace,” chief executive Mike Jones said in a statement.
“Our new strategy expands on MySpace’s existing strengths — a deep understanding of social, a wealth of entertainment content and the ability to surface -emerging cultural trends in real-time through our users,” Jones said.
MySpace said the relaunch was aimed at “creating a rich, highly personalized experience for people to discover content and connect with other fans who share similar interests.”
MULTIPLE PLATFORMS
“The entertainment experience will span music, celebrities, movies, television and games and will be available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events,” it said.
MySpace said it would focus on promoting “curators” — members with knowledge around entertainment and cultural topics and back them with “resources, tools and platform to expand their reach within the MySpace community.”
MySpace boasts more than 100 million users worldwide compared with Facebook’s more than 500 million and since being eclipsed by Facebook, the site has positioned itself as a platform for musicians and their fans.
The company said it would release a mobile version of the site later this year along with a new MySpace application for Apple’s iPhone and Android devices.
MySpace said the new site began rolling out Wednesday in beta, or test, mode and would be available to all users worldwide by the end of next month.
YAHOO
Separately, Yahoo has hired a former executive at one of the world’s largest media companies to fill a -major void on its management team.
Ross Levinsohn is joining Yahoo Inc as an executive vice president in charge of the company’s advertising sales, media division and partnerships in North America, Central America and South America.
He replaces Hilary Schneider, who announced her resignation last month along with two other top executives. The defections raised doubts about Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s efforts to revive the company’s revenue growth.
Levinsohn is best known for leading an Internet expansion at News Corp, owner of the 20th Century Fox movie studio, Fox television network and the Wall Street Journal. He started an investment fund after leaving News Corp in 2006.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained