From O.J.V at internet marketing Articles

Changes are on the way for MySpace.
Later this month, the social networking powerhouse will roll out new features such as a new home page and new profile-building tools. The result could turn MySpace into a significant threat to portals like Yahoo. But first, MySpace will have to get over its own past.

If all goes to plan, MySpace would go beyond being a site where people build personalized profile pages and hang out online with friends, and become more of a gateway to the Web, where users can read news headlines, listen to music, watch videos, and more easily communicate with pals.

MySpace embarks on this makeover with five new features. On June 18, the company will relaunch its homepage. Instead of seeing a few boxes for "cool new videos" and "cool new people," users will see items such as news stories, ways to call up local weather, links to entertainment portions of the site, and images of top MySpace bloggers.

Small Businesses and individuals will also be able to Advertise at MySpace.

Starting early next year, small businesses and individuals will be able to use templates to put together banner ads and specify the characteristics of the audiences they want to reach, MySpace executives said.

The ad buyers will be charged only for the viewers who click through to be taken to the advertisers' profiles.
The move takes advantage of MySpace's continuing effort to group its users into increasingly specific categories. For the last few months, the company has let dozens of big companies aim ads at users that MySpace has identified as sports fans or movie fans, for example

The announcement comes a day ahead of the planned introduction of a new advertising system by MySpace's chief rival, Facebook Inc. MySpace is larger by most measures, but Facebook is growing faster and lately has attracted more attention from technology companies.
Facebook's plan also is expected to use information from user profiles and may target ads to those users even as they view pages elsewhere on the Web.

MySpace's so-called hyper-targeting takes into account the obvious -- such as hobbies and interests posted by MySpace's 110 million registered users -- but also more subtle clues, such as the pictures they use in the background of their pages and what they blog about.

From Internet Advertising and Online annonsering