Panasonic’s big bet in 2012 is a social network that has been steadily losing cachet considering that 2008: Myspace.

Panasonic trotted out Justin Timberlake at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas these days to try and bring sexy back to the pioneering web site identified for social networking, band promotion and genuinely poor web design, all although generating Panasonic TVs much more integrated into your social life.

The partnership is potentially a reinvigorating shot in the arm for Myspace, whose revenues and membership numbers have been in steady decline for numerous years, as competing social networks Facebook and Twitter have surged ahead despite having a later start.

Myspace is staking its reinvention on Myspace Television, a service that lets you chat with friends, share shows and web videos, and uncover what’s common amongst other Myspace Television viewers — all on your Tv, while watching the shows you really like.

“This is the evolution of a single of our greatest inventions, the television,” stated Timberlake, who began out in entertainment as a cast member of the Mickey Mouse Club, got renowned as a member of boy band ‘N Sync and then went on to turn out to be a large solo pop star in the early 2000s. Timberlake also invested an undisclosed amount in Myspace back in June 2011.

“MyspaceTV is an over-the-top social tv service that brings an entirely new dimension to the Television experience you’re familiar with these days,” stated Tim Vanderhook, the chief executive of Myspace, onstage at Panasonic’s press conference. Vanderhook and his brother, Chris Vanderhook, are the founders of Certain Media, the firm that acquired Myspace from News Corp. for $35 million in mid-2011. News Corp. had initially purchased Myspace from its founders in 2005 for $580 million.

The Myspace Tv service will let you watch live Tv while chatting with your pals on your laptop, tablet or the Television screen itself. In a commercial for the service, Panasonic showed a bunch of bros hanging out in separate rooms whilst watching a football game, chatting with each other and jumping into the air simultaneously when their team scored a touchdown.

Myspace Television works together with an app, the Myspace Companion App, which helps you uncover videos you might want to watch, share them with your friends, and make them play on your Television with a single button press. For this app, Panasonic’s commercial showed some attractive young African Americans watching a hip-hop video from separate locations and sharing it with a single an additional.

Vanderhook mentioned Myspace Television “offers the distinctive ability to watch Television shows with your buddies, chat with your friends, and see what shows are trending with the common public.”

For Myspace, Panasonic’s endorsement is huge. It indicates that Myspace Television will be integrated into Panasonic Viera televisions, giving the social network a potent leg up in its reinvention. It’s not just for Panasonic TVs, even though.

“We’re attempting to give the social entertainment experience across all devices,” said Myspace chief operating officer Chris Vanderhook, in an interview with VentureBeat. He stated that Precise Media has been creating an ad network and technologies for sharing entertainment experiences for more than a year, since well before its acquisition. Panasonic’s partnership is a enormous endorsement, he mentioned.

“Panasonic is a massive business. They hand-picked Myspace to deliver this product. It’s a fantastic testament. They’ve seen the product, and they believe in what we can bring to the Tv experience,” Chris Vanderhook mentioned.

For Panasonic, it’s much less clear that embracing a struggling social network so enthusiastically is a great move. In reality, the announcement was given premiere billing at the very end of the business’s CES press conference — and an exec even introduced that section of the conference with a “one far more thing” comment that echoed Steve Jobs. For the “one far more thing” to be Myspace was, nicely, a bit of a letdown.

And of course, a lot depends on whether Myspace’s dwindling but nonetheless sizable audience will adhere to the organization’s new path toward becoming a media service on all sorts of devices — a danger that Timberlake acknowledged.

“To the millions of Myspace users, we want to thank you for sticking with us in this shift,” mentioned Timberlake.

Myspace Television will launch this spring.

Watch the Olympics in 3D

In other news, Panasonic stated it would be offering 3D video recording equipment to NBC Universal so that business can broadcast the upcoming Olympic Games in 3D this summer. Olympic soccer star Brandi Chastain came on stage to aid make the announcement. NBC will broadcast the opening and closing ceremonies, as nicely as hundreds of hours of sporting events, in both 3D and HD.

It’s an try to push forward consumer adoption of 3D tv.

The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that 7 million 3D TVs and 9 million 3D Blu-ray players will ship by the finish of 2012 — that’s about 20 percent of all TVs to be sold this year. Panasonic pointed out that this rate is five instances faster than the uptake for HDTV when it was new.

In addition, 93 percent of Panasonic’s plasma TVs and 40 percent of its LCD TVs will be 3D-enabled in 2012.

The business is also offering tools to develop 3D content material. For instance, Panasonic’s Z-10000 video recorder captures broadcast-quality imagery in 2D and 3D. It also lets you capture 3D effects with objects as close as 18 inches, which is half the minimal distance previously needed for 3D shots.

GM will be unveiling a new in-car electronics technique referred to as MyLink, created in concert with Panasonic. It has a hands-free interface, smartphone integration and high-resolution touchscreen display.

And the company is enhancing a wide selection of products, from its Toughpad rugged tablet to its “Smart Viera” televisions, with enhanced world wide web connectivity alternatives, integration with media services, and the like.

“Almost all of our 2012 lineup will be internet-connected merchandise,” said Shiro Kitajima, president of the consumer electronics division of Panasonic.

For example, Panasonic has updated its Toughpad line, which Kitajima showed off by dropping it onto the ground, where it bounced with an unnerving thump, but continued to perform. He also showed the potential to move video from the tablet to a Panasonic Tv just by swiping up and “throwing” the video onto the huge screen.

Skype will be integrated into a lot of Panasonic televisions with an optional camera mounted on best of the Tv set.

Ooyala will be able to deliver video content directly to Panasonic Viera televisions. Flixster will also be portion of Intelligent Viera, giving folks the ability to search and watch videos from the internet. The business is also partnering with Disney to deliver interactive digital comic books to TVs.

For a lot more news out of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, be certain to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

Photographs: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat