MySpace jumps on Twitter bandwagon

The News Corp-owned website said it is rolling out a test version of software that lets its US members stream real-time comments to MySpace and Twitter.

The move comes less than a month after it emerged that for the first time Twitter received more UK visits than MySpace.

For the week ending August 29, Twitter picked up one in every 400 UK internet visits and was ranked as the 27th most visited website in the UK, one position above MySpace, according to Hitwise.

News Corp executives will be hoping MySpace's added functionality will prevent the site from being eclipsed in the US as well as the UK.

MySpace has also been overshadowed by Facebook on both sides of the Atlantic. Earlier this month Facebook announced it had broken through the 300m members barrier.

Sharon Nguyen, MySpace senior product manager, said in a statement on the company's website: "Your status update is a quick way to tell friends what you're up to, or in to.

"Our new sync functionality is part of an ongoing effort to make it simple for people to share their status beyond MySpace."

Any US user can opt-in to have updates from MySpace appear in Twitter feeds while the Twitter updates are simultaneously fed back to MySpace pages. Status updates from MySpace are identified as being "from MySpace" in a user's Twitter stream.

It is not known if MySpace is also planning to allow its members to post their status updates to Facebook.