We know that MySpace is a great place for people who love music and for bands who want to make it big. A few days ago MySpace announced a tie up with Facebook for a new feature named Mashup with Facebook. The primary goal of this feature is to help MySpace users easily create a personalized stream of entertainment content based on their interests and taste.
Your interests are ascertained by the likes you’ve shared on your Facebook stream from clicking Like buttons across the web. Read on to find how you can get personalized entertainment content recommendations from MySpace, courtesy of Facebook.
Overview
After the introduction of Facebook’s Like button, it’s now almost everywhere online from blogs to online shops. Users have started clicking the Like buttons to share great online destinations they’ve discovered with their friends and family. MySpace aims to tap into this aspect of the social graph to be a breath of fresh of air to its revamped brand image.
In just a single click, all your likes and interests from your Facebook profile are ported over to MySpace. Making use of this data about you, MySpace populates your stream immediately with entertaining content that you are already in love with. You have total control over your stream and can also fine tune it to pick up recommendations and up & coming MySpace trending topics. You can also interact with people with similar interests when it comes all entertainment verticals like music, celebrities, TV, and movies.
This new feature is already live for all MySpace users across the globe.
MySpace is also planning to add Facebook Like buttons across the social network, just like other sites & blogs do, so you can share what you’ve discovered with your friends over at Facebook.
How it Works
Initiating the Facebook Connection
Mashup with Facebook is not turned on by default and you can choose to opt-in to the feature if you really want to get recommendations based on your interests. The setup is really simple and works just like any other web app or Facebook app that uses OAuth.
MySpace Requesting Permission
Don’t worry, you won’t have to give out your Facebook login credentials to MySpace. While at MySpace, just click on the button that says Facebook and allow it access your social information.
Pulling Facebook Information
After a few clicks, based on the data pulled from your Facebook profile, a similar but basic profile will be created at MySpace.
Recommendations
You will be shown a page that briefly lets you know of the celebrities and entertainment verticals based on your Likes and a whole bunch of thumbnails (interests) to choose. If you select the thumbnails that match your interests, relevant content will begin showing up in your stream.
Customizing Your Interests
Facebook “likes” and “interests” are matched to relevant MySpace topic pages, profiles, video programming and more. Your MySpace stream is actually filled with so much content that it may be off-putting for some. Twitter-like trending topics show up on the left side of the stream along with the usual social networking features like photos, visitors to your page etc.
There’s also an option to see all the updates coming in to the stream in real-time.
What Happens to Your Personal Information?
MySpace Profile
As I mentioned before, MySpace isn’t privy to your Facebook login credentials but they do get almost all of your profile information (name, email, gender, birth date, picture), as well as your “Likes” and interests (movies, music, celebs, video etc). Other than that they don’t have access to any other information from your social graph.
Now, based on this Facebook data, they’ve setup a MySpace account for you. I’m not sure if that’s going to be of any use as all my friends are on Facebook and half of them have never even typed MySpace.com in a browser. Once an account is setup, it is subject to the Terms and Conditions of MySpace and if you are a privacy hawk, I suggest you to take a look into it.
Also, all your actions at MySpace are not monitored by Facebook and if you want, can sync your accounts to share content from MySpace to your Facebook stream.
Share Your Thoughts!
Do you like Mashup with Facebook? Is it a desperate attempt from an ailing social network to get some traffic? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section. Thanks!