It's finally happened. Social networking juggernaut MySpace has released a fresh new look, complete with a massive advertising influence, about two-thirds of the home page. After all, social networking needs to make money one of these days, right?

Scroll down a bit and you'll see the lead video of the day ("hamster gets owned" when I visited), along with thumbnails of other popular videos of the day. The module also has tabs for music (with a MySpace featured artist of the day) and people (highlighting cool people of the day.) To the right is member login, "find a friend" and top music and videos of the day determined by most plays by users.

After login, you'll notice the user page is also updated, with the most significant upgrade being the new navigation bar. Now you can jump to your inbox, check up on your friends, search for people, visit the apps gallery, edit your profile and hit the music site with one click.

In all, the upgrade was desperately needed and it looks great. The site is cleaner, easier to navigate and has the appearance of an actual, useful website rather than a collection of misplaced and poorly-designed apps sitting on a page that looked every bit of its five years of age. They have answered the call to what their audience wants most - videos, music and quick access to email and networking.