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Do you still have a MySpace account?  I cancelled mine almost immediately after Facebook let me in, and haven’t looked back.  The whole time I was using MySpace, I found the UI to be pretty poor from a design perspective.  The one gem of value I did (and still do) get from the service is their music portal, which is unparalleled in terms of giving their users direct access to the bands they love.

In case you haven’t heard, MySpace has been playing second fiddle to Facebook in the social networking space since around December of ‘08 (according to Compete).  The gap has been continuously widening since and is to a point where Twitter may threaten to overtake them soon.  Have a look for yourself:

So the net of all of this led to the recent news of massive layoffs in an effort to save the company from their apparent demise. First it was the US office layoffs around a week ago where the company cut around 30% of their staff. Now we hear that they’ve taken the next step and are terminating 2/3 of their international staff.

Another interesting tidbit that has come to light through all of this is the fate of MySpace founder Tom Anderson. A Mashable report today stated that Mr. Anderson is staying with the company, but simply transferring roles and becoming a company ‘ambassador’. This new role will allow him to do, well, pretty much nothing, all the while raking in an annual $500K salary. Nice.

So what’s next?  In my opinion, the platform is due for a major overhaul.  It may be too late to save the social networking piece of the service, but I was surprised to learn that their music service MySpace Music continues to dominate the space (see chart below).  The MySpace Music service has become a music industry standard throughout the world.  If you’re a band or musician, large or small, chances are you have a MySpace Music page and if you don’t, you’re not for real. The fact that users of the service can access band pages and leave comments for their heroes, with the chance for interaction, makes the site unique.

So perhaps MySpace’s future is comprised completely in the online music space, continuing to push and improve their unique offering.  MySpace should focus on one thing and do it extremely well, instead of trying to do tons of different things with mediocre results.  Take Facebook for example – the core functionality they offer is their update/news feed plus a great photo repositiry and tagging functionality.  They bring these together to vreate a great product that they execute very well.

Certainly the acquisition by News Corp. will be critiqued and criticized for years to come, and ultimately blamed for their loss of the top spot in the social networking space.  Time will tell if they can right the ship, but this recent news is not good.

Another ship that MySpace seemingly missed is social media marketing that Twitter (especially) and Facebook have embraced so well.  You never hear about Hubspot or other social media companies and consultancies talking about companies utilizing the wonderful attributes of MySpace for their social media strategies.  So what do you like about MySpace?  How does it deliver value to you?  Check out how they dominate music…amazing: