Let’s admit that many of us are curious, if not excited, to see what’s going to happen to the new MySpace.

America loves a comeback story, and now that MySpace’s arch nemesis Facebook has somewhat fallen out of favor with the public by instituting cryptic security settings, encouraging spammers, tinkering with its timeline format and overestimating its stock value, MySpace just may be able to thrive by positioning itself as a digital space for musicians and music lovers.

Enlisting Justin Timberlake, of course, is a strong way to begin a rebranding project. Unsigned artists make up the majority of the revamped MySpace’s membership, and what struggling musician wouldn’t want to have some level of connection—regardless of how remote and digital—with an artist of JT’s cache? He is the perfect celebrity/actor/musician to bridge the established and the new. The public likes Justin Timblerlake. He did that thing with the box.

Yet, in its effort to attract the most impressive new talent, MySpace is also tempting fate by angering established talent–or at least Merlin, a digital rights management group that represents established talents ranging from Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, and DJ Khaled to She and Him and Wilco.

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Back in September we reported on Justin “I Don’t Make Music Anymore” Timberlake’s latest role as the public face of the new-and-improved MySpace. A memo that leaked this week offers more details about the company’s future plans; Spotify and Pandora‘s PR teams should take note.

Interactive Media Holdings (née Specific Media) purchased the property from News Corp last summer, jazzed it up and prepped it for a sorely needed relaunch: Despite the fact that traffic on the site went up by 36% over the past twelve months, MySpace is on pace to lose approximately $40 million in 2012–and organizers expect it to lose at least another $25M next year.

According to the leaked pitch materials, the folks at IMC are “holding out” for another $50M in capital so they can officially re-launch MySpace as a Spotify competitor by making use of what they call the “worlds largest music library of 42M songs and 100K music videos” and its “direct relationship with 5M artists”. How do they plan to do it? By starting a subscription model in 2013 and offering users not only streaming mp3s but music downloads, “artist merchandise” and “event ticketing” services. In other words, MySpace looks to become the one-stop shop for all things related to pop music.

It’s true that MySpace already has more members in the US than Pandora or Spotify, because most members never bothered to delete their profiles. The company also appears to have a cost advantage over its supposed competitors:

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Today brings the return of a familiar face to our computer screens. No, we’re not talking about Justin Timberlake, though he is a wise choice to play the role of public representative for the brand new MySpace.

This new video dropped on Twitter yesterday, and we have to say that we are somewhat impressed that MySpace has so obviously improved upon its famously awful interface!

Hmm…that was more of a tease than anything, but the new MySpace seems to combine elements of Facebook, Spotify and especially Pinterest (the visual layout is all but a carbon copy). This change is a wise move:

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General impressions of Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at yesterday’s TechCrunch TC Disrupt conference have been mixed with good reason: The Zuck called his company’s post-IPO performance “disappointing” and hinted vaguely at the profit potential of mobile ventures that the public is obviously way too dumb to understand while acknowledging that Facebook’s mobile apps aren’t as good as they should be; still, investors have confidence in his ability to stay atop the social flock, and stock prices rose nearly 5% after his speech.

The Zuck tried very hard to convince all interested parties that he knows exactly what he’s doing. The key quote: “For me it’s not about fun, it’s about mission. I’d rather be in the cycle when people underestimate us.”

While considering whether smartphones like the brand new iPhone 5 will save Facebook, we figured that now is a perfect time to re-pose the perennial question: Has the social network already reached its peak capacity and influence?

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Photo: Facebook

Oversharing on the Internet went in to overdrive today, after Mark Zuckerberg and Co. at Facebook redeemed themselves from Wednesday’s worldwide backlash against its revamped news feed.

Facebook’s “clean” design of Timeline pages, music streaming, and more connectivity through an open-graph feature is garnering a lot of praise in the blogosphere. Zuckerberg introduced the changes Thursday morning at f8, a Facebook developers conference, and it wasn’t long until there was positive reaction all over the Web about new partnerships with Netflix (not in the U.S., so they can’t even use that to do a little damage control) and music service Spotify.

Musicians should pay attention to this Facebook transformation.

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Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype that will bring video calling to the social network’s 750 million users. Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion and has been a Facebook partner for some time. Today’s announcement also included a new chat design and the addition of group chats. More info is available on The Facebook Blog.

Perhaps you heard that the President hosted a Twitter Townhall today? Radian6 will be working with Twitter to analyze those tweets. Pre-townhall research conducted by Radian6 yielded a number of findings, like national security and financial security are two topics that drive tweets. Additional findings are available here.

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About six companies, including private equity firms, are expected to bid for MySpace this week. According to The Wall Street Journal (both the Journal and MySpace are owned by News Corp.), a Web company based in China, online music company Vevo (Vevo says this isn’t true), and private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners are among those considering the purchase. The fate of MySpace is unclear, but there’s talk of integrating it with existing websites.

Friendster is deleting all of its content next month says Gawker. Wouldn’t be fun to see your old online profile one last time (if you can remember your password from 15 years ago)? Not gone: the typewriter.

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Just a couple weeks after introducing its redesigned site and new entertainment focus, MySpace will now allow its users to log in via Facebook through a product called “Mashup with Facebook.”

TechCrunch says it’s tantamount to crying uncle. The Facebook Connect integration is already live, in part.

Mashable is a little more positive, saying that the mashup fits right in to the MySpace rebrand, which can increase traffic to MySpace and make it easier for users “to do things like follow updates from their favorite entertainers.” You can watch a video for the new features on Mashable as well.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. And let us know if you’re going to be using MySpace more in future work because of this latest development.

[Image via Technorati.]

MySpace has begun rolling out a redesigned site that will target “entertainment junkies” in the 13- to 35-year-old age range. The roll out will take place over the next month starting in the U.S., according to Mediaweek. The story says Mike Jones, president of MySpace, admits that the new focus is part of an admission of defeat to Facebook.

“Per Jones, the main reason for the redesign and refocusing of MySpace is that the war is over, and Facebook won,” it reads.

“We are going niche over broad. We want to focus on a singular need,” the story quotes Jones. Read more

At this point there are a bajillion articles that discuss some aspect of the “Facebook versus Twitter” question: Which fans are more valuable? Which has a higher clickthrough rate? Which social network sells more tickets? Are Facebook and Twitter the same?

PC World adds to the ongoing conversation with a story that says:

Facebook makes up 78 percent of traffic among all social network sites and micro-blogging site Twitter accounts for 5 percent, but on average “tweets” with embedded links get 19 clicks while Facebook’s shared links only get three clicks, according to a study by SocialTwist.

More research and numbers to help clear things up! But the story does map out a head-to-head that offers up some information that will allow marketers to decide which social media platform is best for the brand or campaign they’re working with.

And the story includes this tidbit via the SocialTwist study: “MySpace still has 15 percent of social media market share.”