MySpace gears up for face-lift

MySpace has promised a revamp of its site

MySpace is to launch a major redesign of its website on 18 June, promising improved navigation and search features.

The cluster of top-line navigation tabs will be reduced to five (Home, Profile, Mail, Music, MySpaceTV) and the rest will be relegated to a drop-down menu.

Searches will be graded for personal relevance so that results for linked friends come first, followed by more extraneous links (for example, people you worked with) and then 'the rest'.

The MySpaceTV Flash video player will have a true full-screen mode and easier controls.

MySpace has 115 million visitors every month, and claims that one in four Americans visit the site at least once a month.

Widely seen as the 'mother' of all social networks, although it stands on the shoulders of plenty of predecessors, MySpace faces fierce competition from transnational sites like Facebook and national competitors such as Bebo in the UK.