10e20 Blog

This morning I finally had a chance to look at the recently launched MySpace News service and my first impression was - is this it? Labeled by many as a potential Digg killer (just like Netscape was to be) MySpace News combines elements of Digg, which is based on stories submitted and ranked by readers, and Google News, which organizes news according to subject matter. The URL is even modeled off the more traditional subdomain news.myspace.com a la news.google.com rather then having it as a new service www.myspacenews.com.

The service, now in beta testing, aggregates news from around the web and provides MySpace users with the ability to vote on what they think is most interesting. Stories are then ranked according to MySpace member votes. So let’s take a look…

When you arrive at the homepage you see a lot of extra “noise” before even looking at the first story (which is to be expected from MySpace) - my monitor is set at 1280 X 800 and I am looking at it on a 17 inch notebook screen but here is all I see above the fold:

Now to be fair with Digg I can only see two of the top stories but the difference is that I can also navigate throughout the site due to their topbar navigation:

MySpace News has the categories listed on the right hand side of the page below the fold. They have 25 main sections broken down into 300 sub-sections. For example, Animals is one main category with Cats, Dogs, Pets & Wildlife all listed at sub-categories. By default the main navigation only shows the Popular categories which is currently 20 out of the main 25:

The expanded categories are a nice touch and in stark contrast to Google New’s very limited categories (currently only 7 main categories with no sub-categories) and even much more then Digg’s own categories (ever tried figuring out where to submit a story about copy writing to on Digg)? But at the same time, 300 seems to be a bit overkill especially right now when there doesn’t seem to be much activity at all on the site. Also if you read their FAQ they state that they would like to have pages for nearly all topics. We can create a new topic page if it’s appropriate and if there is quality news available online on your topic. That could get really messy.

Currently the most popular story on their homepage has 5 votes while the most popular story on Digg has over 1909. Google News does not allow votes on their stories. MySpace News has an Article Rating system on a scale of 1 - 5 (1 = Useless, 2 = Boring, 3 = Average, 4 = Interesting, 5 = Must Read). Rating an article tells the News system how much you liked the article and user’s opinion influences which articles and in what order various items appear on their News pages. Hence, the more an article gets 5’s the more likely it is to appear on the homepage.

Before rating .After it has been rated

One important note is that just like Digg, you must be a member before you are able to vote or interact with the articles. If you are not a MySpace user, you can still view and read all the articles but you just can’t vote. The interesting part though is that your vote shows whether you are logged in or not. Loren from SEJ notes that is because MySpace is tracking votes by user IP or Cookie so don’t try spamming MySpace News via multiple MySpace accounts.

When you click through to an article, you are shown the article within a MySpace News frame (unlike Digg where you are brought directly to the article in a new window or Google News where you are brought directly to the article within the same window/tab). Via their FAQ they state that the reason for the frame is to allow you to vote for an article while you are reading it. It also lists linked headlines of other news articles. If you want to make it go away, just click the permalink on the upper left side of the frame. By showing you the content within the MySpace News frame they are able to keep you on MySpace and keep control of your experience.

Getting listed seems to be a very simple process that starts with their Submit Feed form:

It seems like they have some guidelines and won’t just be letting any sites or blogs in:

We’re looking for the best from a variety of categories. Some factors include: Is this source topical? Do they publish regularly? Is there a core audience? Do other news sources link to this site?

The technology behind MySpace News is based on Newroo, a company they acquired last year - at its heart the engine indexes and groups blog posts based on topics in order to show emerging news in near real-time and to show distributed discussion in a single place (ie Techmeme or Megite). Like Google News, MySpace News will pull news items from a number of trusted sources via their RSS feeds. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch speculates that user submissions (what Digg is built around) will be coming down the road.

One area that might be very important for smaller businesses is the Local section. Many smaller, locally based businesses often express to me that they have a hard time leveraging social networks due to geographic limitations, this new local section might be an interesting way to overcome that (especially if you have products or services that will appeal to the MySpace crowd). On top of the local section there is also a Local Events section (which is featured on the homepage and every subpage) - in this section they list events from 12 major US cities:

Another strong promotion spot is the Featured Blog which doesn’t seem to be sponsored (it’s a straight link without no follow or even any ad tracking). I am not sure when this changes because today it is the ultra-popular gossip blog run by Perez Hilton and looking at the cache from April 20th it was also Perez’s site.

One very surprising ommission is the that there is no ability to search. For me I rarely use Google News except if I am searching specifically for a story. Interestingly enough Google powers the search engine for MySpace but searching through MySpace News is not an option:

When it really comes down to it, MySpace News is very different then Digg, the main similarity seems to be the fact that you can vote on stories on each site and that they are both extremely popular social networking sites. Calling it a ‘Digg killer’ is a good way to get press but its not even close to the truth. Digg is much more interactive (submitting, voting, commenting, tracking) while MySpace News is much more one-sided (at this point). The comparison with Google News are a closer fit but until you have the ability to search for what you are looking for that’s not a fair comparison either.

With that being said, MySpace News is something to watch simply due to the sheer number of MySpace users and the potential to reach many of them at one time much easier. If this was Company X’s News service that had just launched, most people would not even bother writing about it but when you are talking about one of the most popular websites in the world you have to take notice. One point to remember is that Fox/MySpace have a ton of information about their users (age, sex, likes, dislikes, etc) and they will most likely use that to shape the news that is shown (is the typical MySpace user more concerned with NATO or the latest Britney Spears drama?). Oh yeah and eventually they will actually start promoting it to their users (with a link from the homepage and their topbar)….