I'm not sure exactly what the question is, but I'll try this approach:

I can't think of an example of the "top friends" view being used recently, and I don't think it has much to offer. The closest parallel I can come up with is Path suggesting that you should *actually* limit yourself to your "top" friends.

For wall comments, I think most services today has some variation: # followers, retweets/reblogs, likes/hearts, what have you.

And I think the design point is significant. As ugly as they could be, MySpace allowed people to make the page their own. Facebook (at the time, and still to some extent) just offered boxes into which you could put your things -- the page was still Facebook's. Shift has been in the MySpace direction since.

Whitney, don't really have a question. Just thinking out loud.

WRT Wall Comments, the equivalent would be if Twitter users were ranked based on number of @replies directed towards them. On MySpace, it was how often people wanted to talk to you that denoted your popularity – not how often people wanted to hear what you had to say (Twitter).

WRT to MySpace giving you the ability to make a page of your own, though I am a bit nostalgic for it I remember being most enthusiastic about Facebook's design (and how it made your profile pretty without any work but text entry on your part) when I migrated over in high school.

There's Facebook's "close friends" list/notifications. I kind of like that it gives you similar benefits as "top friends" without taking up space in the UI.

Amazing thing about MySpace is how many millions of people were copying and pasting CSS, HTML code, and more. All gone and lost with mobile and I think we can bring it back. The other massive feature you don't mention is mood - was one of the top most updated things on MySpace after top friends.
I believe that the next big social network will focus on expressive custom profiles around a good feed or communication channel.

"I believe that the next big social network will focus on expressive custom profiles around a good feed or communication channel."

I very much agree with this. I think though that the communication channel already exists, it's twitter. Which means we need a better way to build super expressive profiles. So, not to toot horn too much, but this is part of what we're working on with scroll kit.

Some examples:

codybrown.name
kateray.net
mmmendes.com
scrollkit.com

We've thought about editing on mobile but have not gone too far down that road.

At Myspace, there was a focus by the community on curated self-expression. The use of embeds, themes, and media, was all meant to make the page a canvas. While many folks talk about how Facebook supplanted Myspace (which is certainly did from a social networking perspective), it was really Tumblr and Twitter that provided the best outlet for the forms of sharing that most occurred on the network.

Josh, love your point about how many ("normal") people were throwing around HTML and CSS. Heck, I touched more code in seventh grade than I do as the co-founder of Branch today.

Max, fascinating perspective re: Tumblr and Twitter. Do you think they've taken on that role successfully, or does it leave something missing?

When I was at Myspace, the most interesting companies to me were Tumblr, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pandora, and Aardvark. I thought that those services met a different core need of Myspace users: curation, expression, interest-based serendipity, music discovery, and social connections respectively. I thought that Myspace future lay in creating a new product that could weave those threads together. Ultimately, I don't think that any single product has risen to create a cohesive experience that matches the potential for what Myspace could have created.