In terms of Social Networking, MySpace is the king of the virtual mountain. Even more than boasting its status as the premiere social site online, MySpace also touts the title of the most visited site on the Internet. With such a massive audience tuned in, MySpace continues to look for ways to increase the time on site for its users.
MySpace users can keep up with the exploits of their friends, watch videos, and listen to a multitude of different musical artists while surfing the confines of the popular social networking site. As announced earlier today, users will now be able to check in on the latest news items as well.
Terry Heaton runs down the features of MySpace News:
- MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
- Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
- MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
- Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
- Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
- MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!
It looks like there are some Digg-like features to MySpace news, but will it actually challenge Digg for social news supremacy? Pete Cashmore at Mashable ponders how and if the two news entities will be able to co-exist:
It’ll also be interesting to see what the MySpace demographic selects as the most important news of the day: just like Digg users focus on Apple, the RIAA, Google and how awesome Digg is, we can probably expect MySpace users to talk about celebrity news and other mainstream, lowest common denominator stuff. I call this a win for the celebrity blogs, if they can seek inclusion.
So while MySpace News may appear at first glance to be a rival to Digg, chances are that celebrity gabbers like Perez Hilton will feel the sting of competition instead.
