MySpace bolsters status update features
Social-networking site is giving users easier ways to sort through the ever-growing stream of information.
Myspace on Wednesday is revising its status update tool, something the company estimates is used in excess of 15 million times a day by its members.
New to the feature is a way to sort people's updates by type. For instance, if you want to see only your friends who have listed their mood as "aggravated," you can do so. Likewise you'll soon be able to search for specific friends and see their latest status updates without having to visit their profile pages. This comes with other granular filters that let you see just the friends you've put on your "top friends" list, and any categories you've created such as "work" or "school."
There's also a new option to see just the latest update from just each one of your friends. MySpace hopes this will uncover updates that get lost in the noise created by users who post more often than others--something which can fill up the news stream quickly.
The new features are going out to users in English-speaking countries later today, with other countries "next week." In a future update, MySpace plans to let users comment on items directly in the update feed (like you can do in Facebook), as well as offer an alert option that can send you an e-mail or SMS text message when a certain user updates.
