MySpace Takes on Digg / Netscape and Fails to Deliver. Yup, It Sucks!

Looks like MySpace wants to go back to its roots and launch another crappy product without style or functionality. The recently launched their MySpace News Beta (of course they had to include the uber-lame BETA tag – more about BETAs in another post), which looks like a really poorly modified Pligg clone. You would think that with all it’s resources, NewsCorp would make sure they had a good product before putting out an ugly piece of junk like this, but nothing seems to surprse me anymore.

The site, ~~steals~~ borrows the now famous Digg voting system and presents blog posts and news stories (I have yet to see anything other than a blog post) for users to read and review. The output is just poorly designed. While I do appreciate the vast number of categories the site offers, and the events options (they aggregate events from Backpage, CitySearch, amongst others) I don’t really see any reason to rate an event that I, nor anyone else has attended. It just makes no sense. I see nothing else about the site that I like.

In addition, when I attempted to include my blog’s feed to the site, it simply timed out. I tried again later with another blog and got the same result. I realize its a “BETA”, but these kinds of problems won’t win the MySpace team any kind of good buzz.

According to Playfuls.com:

The news feature of MySpace is built using Newroo technology, a company they acquired in early 2006 for a rumored $7 million. Newroo never had the chance of displaying the merits of its technology in public because of the acquisition.

I’m not sure, but I think they got ripped off. I’m pretty sure this could be developed for somewhere around $.75 (not a fan, can’t you tell?)

Here are some other links to thoughts about this new site:
- MySpace News Kinda Sucks
- Social Media Now: MySpace News Not Ready for Prime Time
- MySpace added News aggregation
- Will MySpace News Ever Fly? (The Answer May Surprise You)
- After the (brief) Honeymoon: MySpace News Still Sucks
- MySpace News: failure to launch, no one is reading