Reuters - MySpace plans redesign for next week

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MySpace plans redesign for next week

Friday, Jun 13, 2008 1:18PM UTC

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's MySpace plans a global redesign next week in an attempt to widen its demographics and boost user engagement on the site, the social networking site said on Friday.

In what it said would be the largest scale relaunch of a website of its size, MySpace will change its home page, navigation, profile editing, search, and MySpaceTV player facilities. Other changes will come during the summer.

"This is more than a face-lift; we're changing the way people interact with the site and with brands," MySpace said, adding that a major advertiser was signed for the U.S. MySpace home page on the first day of the relaunch.

The main phase of the relaunch is set for June 18.

MySpace said it had drastically overhauled the look and feel of its searches, which it said currently ranked third in total number of searches by any site.

It said it was working with Lucene Open-Source engine and community, marking the first time MySpace has contributed to the open-source community.

MySpace, with about 110 million users worldwide, claims to be the most trafficked website in the United States, adding that about 300,000 people sign up each day.

(Reporting by Christopher Kaufman, editing by Will Waterman/Jeffrey Benkoe)