Today, MySpace announced a revamped games homepage, available at www.myspace.com/games, which helps users discover and share games virally. The new Games section also improves application engagement and analytics tools for game developers. In addition, MySpace introduced the “MySpace Neon iPhone” application that gives users access to their MySpace games on the iPhone.
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If you’ve scanned the social networking news recently, you’ve probably noticed that many non-Facebook social networks are losing traffic, and a lot of them are shifting direction towards games.  hi5 acquired Big Six games last week and Bebo launched a dedicated games section late last year.  MySpace has been losing traffic steadily for years,  and their June 2009 staff cuts and re-emphasis on music, games and applications failed to entice users back to the site.  Tagged.com, measured to be 2.65% of the US social network market, integrated with the ourWorld games portal this week.  Can these moves help these social networks turn into social gaming networks and compete against the plethora of  social games available on Facebook?
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MySpace has just sent out a release announcing that the company’s real-time feed is now showing up in Google’s real-time search results. We’ve posted a screenshot of the results below, but it’s pretty straight forward how the new service works: any MySpace user that makes public updates will now be indexed in Google results. With Google now indexing a large number of social network updates, the company is becoming deeply integrated into the social web.
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This evening MySpace sent out a press release announcing that the company’s CEO, Owen Van Natta, is stepping down and will replaced by Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn who will serve as co-Presidents. There are a number of interesting components of this news story. The most interesting is that we’ve been hearing rumors that Owen Van Natta was under strict orders to turn the company and if it wasn’t turned around within 6 months he was out. The other interesting tidbit is that Techcrunch recently published that Jason Hirschhorn was exiting the company.
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Facebook users might not even remember that prior to Facebook (commonly referred to as the “Before Facebook Era” (BFB)) there used to be a free service called MySpace. Yes, the same MySpace that allowed users to customize their themes, listen to music, chat with friends, and other such niceties. MySpace was declared dead some 6 or 7 months ago – and its hard for us to remember what it used to be like. Fortunately, SuperNews has created a video which brings back memories.
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The folks at MySpace Music are extremely excited to announce the Beta launch of My Music 2.0 – a place where users can build and manage social playlists using world’s most comprehensive online music catalog, or so it says. Apparently in all their excitement, the team behind MySpace Music actually forgot to launch the service, or was forced to take it down temporarily.
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For Imeem users who have had no access their playlists on the new MySpace website, recent news will bring music to their ears—literally. Users can now reacquire their playlists through MySpace Music. TechCrunch recently reported and confirmed that playlists are able to be imported.
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At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta announced a number of new MySpace Music products. One of the most significant products is MySpace Music Videos which not only brings back music videos but also ironically heavily resembles the design styling of the MTV website. While the Financial Times may be convinced by Owen Van Natta’s statement that “Facebook is not our competition”, we aren’t.
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Social game developer Playdom has marked its entry into iPhone applications with the release of Mobsters: Big Apple. It links your mobile game to your online game, which is currently on MySpace. Already a social game, Mobsters was rather popular on the MySpace network, making the new iPhone game an extension of the online game version.

That means there’s a more seamless continuation of game play for users, whether they’re online or on their iPhone. It’s a smart move, as it carries over the social and gaming aspects of Mobsters, maintaining the sociability of the game itself.
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Weeks after announcing massive layoffs and international restructuring, MySpace is teaming up with a subset of its parent company Fox International Channels (FIC) in order to combine and streamline advertising deals. Under the terms of the partnership FIC will manage local advertising, marketing and promotion in several countries including Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Poland, Mexico and Turkey.

These are all countries in which MySpace has a localized version of its social networking site. These are also countries that are remaining active and nurtured after the major restructuring of MySpace as a company. Under the restructure, MySpace seemingly cut back on a good portion of its international efforts, closing several offices and combining the work towards an effort to create a more centralized account of localized sites and advertising methods. This was named as an initiative for focusing on innovation, which is an area in which MySpace has been lacking in relation to competitors such as Facebook.
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