I have the power!

So it's been percolating around on the internet that ol' Tom is going to introduce a tiered system of Myspacing, and yours truly has finally gotten the poop on what's going down with the News Corp's newest acquisition.

"Power Users will be charged 9.95 per month, but they will be able to fully customize thier page and chat with whomever they like. They can add Basic Users, OR Power Users as friends."

So basically it will let me do what I can already do for free? Not exactly, according to Myspace literature on the subject. For the $10 a month, users will get power tools so they can fully customize their pages, entirely in-house. They will get a series of buttons eliminating all that HTML coding that onyl Myspace users seem to have to put up with. But there are some new features that really this reporter's ears up, and made him think twice about his recently-cancelled account.

Apparantly, Myspace was so steamed at Google's recent acquisition of YouTube - after not being given a "fair chance to match offers" - they were reported to have been working on ways to make it difficult, if not impossible, to post YouTube videos on a Myspace page. Soon, if you want to post video on Myspace, you're going to have to:

1. Upload your video directly to Myspace
2. All videos must be original, uncopywrighted content
3. Video content will be monitored similarly to photos, for violence or nudity, or other such things objectionable to the News Corp.
   
4. Have a Power User account

Now, I was getting pretty pissed off when I heard about all this. But in typical Myspace fashion, there were a few perks to sweeten the pot. All Power Users will be able to:

1. Track all page views.
2. A web-display will show just exactly how you are connected to any other user.
3. Preferred display on searches in which your page would appear.
4. HTML power tools.
5. Page templates, with fixed-width tables etc, so your photos etc don't become an unwieldy mess to look at (and with background images that actually stay in the background).
6. No distracting advertising... none actually!
7. Unlike "basic" users, all power users retain the rights to any material posted on their pages.
8. A complicated filter system that will allow you to specify undesireable users, and appear invisible to them, as if you didn't have an account.

I'm not sure what Myspace will look like in the far future, but I can tell there are some pretty drastic changes afoot now. Stay tuned to the Jerk-King for more info.