Myspace Inc. has launched a new mobile Web site and iPhone application to further extend the site?s social entertainment experience to mobile devices.

With more than a third of Myspace?s Generation-Y users interacting with the site on mobile devices every day, these new offerings meet their desire to consume entertainment news and content anytime, anywhere and from any device. While the mobile site and application will be ad-supported, there are currently no launch sponsors.

?The new Myspace mobile experience brings discovery to the forefront with a focus on entertainment content and allows our users to enjoy all of that content without requiring them to log in?a big change from our previous offering that reflects our new direction as a social entertainment destination,? said Bjorn Laurin, vice president and general manager of mobile at Myspace, Beverly Hills, CA. 

?We have a two-pronged approach to mobile?first we are taking the most compelling entertainment elements of Myspace.com and making them portable for users on the go via our mobile Web site,? he said.

?Simultaneously, we are building a portfolio of independent applications that are tailored to specific entertainment categories?for example, our Music Video app that enables the discovery of new music videos based on your mood or our Logo a Gogo app that allows users to self-express using the new Myspace bracket logo.?

Myspace, a division of News Corp., is a social entertainment destination that drives social interaction by providing a personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to music, celebrities, TV, movies and games.

These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events.

Myspace is also the home of Myspace Music, which offers an ever-growing catalog of freely streamable audio and video content to users and provides major, independent and unsigned artists with the tools to reach new audiences.

Myspace ramps up mobile offerings
The new Myspace mobile Web site is accessible at http://m.myspace.com on all iPhone, iPod touch, Android and Palm smartphones, as well as select Nokia and BlackBerry devices.

The mobile site provides users with a discovery experience around entertainment, including breaking news and status updates from top music artists and video content from TMZ, Fuel TV, Fox, National Geographic and movie trailers.

In addition, the Myspace mobile site features celebrity status updates, photos and blogs.

Users can share photos, videos, links and status updates more across multiple networks, even without logging in.

The Myspace iPhone application, which will be available in the coming weeks, will provide an experience that is centered on the activity stream.

In addition to providing updates from the top celebrities and artists on Myspace, the application will automatically populate a user?s stream with the trending activities of his or her favorite musicians based on the titles in the user?s iTunes library.

For example, if a user has music from specific bands on his or her phone, the Myspace iPhone application will automatically populate the user?s stream with updates from those bands.

Much like the new mobile Web site, the iPhone application will provide tools for sharing across networks and will not require users to be logged in.

As part of Myspace?s mobile application portfolio, the new iPhone application will be a complement to the many other mobile applications currently available includingMyspace Music Videos, Drawler for iPhone and Logo a Gogo.

Myspace Music Videos offers music fans a new expression of randomized video discovery based on their mood via the MySpace Music Romeo application on the Web or iPad.

Drawler is a photo-styling application that lets users draw, color or add stickers, art and words more to their mobile photos.

Logo a Gogo is a new project providing users with artistic tools to create, personalize and share their own Myspace logos.

Targeting Gen Y on mobile
Mr. Laurin said that the target demographic for mobile is the same as the general target audience for Myspace online, which is Gen-Y consumers ages 13-35.

During the next couple of months, Myspace plans to roll out several new rich-media placement opportunities such as homepage takeovers for advertisers to target mobile users.

?Mobile is extremely important for Myspace,? Mr. Laurin said. ?Right now more than a third of our global audience interact with our site on mobile devices and we expect to continue growing our base of users with our new mobile version of our site and our suite of mobile applications.

?We will be educating our users about these and future mobile offering by prominently featuring mobile ads across the Myspace site and our suite of mobile applications,? he said.

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Marketer

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