MySpace (NYSE: NWS) pulled up the curtain a little this week, letting in some light on a makeover still very much in progress and marking a debut of sorts for Co-Presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn as a team. By walking reporters through their road map, the two hope to move the story from “oh woe is MySpace” to “look at MySpace go.” It isn’t going to be easy and it isn’t going to be fast. MySpace’s problems were legendary before Jones and Hirschhorn arrived last year as part of a turn-around triumvirate—and even more so with the hasty departure of Owen Van Natta, giving the social network the dubious distinction of losing two CEOs in less than a year. 

We spoke at length by phone Tuesday. One image to shed: the notion of MySpace as entertainment portal, something Hirschhorn says was poorly communicated by the company. Instead, think of MySpace as a social entertainment experience. “There are other sites on the internet that are big and don’t have permission to be social,” he explains. More from our conversation below:

Hirschhorn, Jones and Van Natta were brought in last spring to replace MySpace’s founding execs CEO Chris DeWolfe and Tom Andersen. The site’s meteoric rise and efforts to maintain, then to regain growth added to a maze of products. Their mission was nothing short of remaking the structure inside and out, stabilizing the business and finding a way to help MySpace fulfill its promise despite being eclipsed as a social network and a business by Facebook. All with an insistent chorus that MySpace’s time has come and gone. Despite the drama around their arrival and Van Nata’s own departure, not to mention all the vignettes in between, Jones and Hirschhorn insist they’ve kept their focus on remaking the site with users in mind. They’ve cut out areas that made no sense to them, things like mom and car verticals, classifieds and jobs, stripping out much of anything that looked like a generic portal. The exception is e-mail, which turns out to be a major connective tissue for MySpace. They’re also increasing the emphasis on “broadcasting”—using MySpace to share and promote creative efforts like music, which gave the site its start, indie films, comedians and more.

What, me worry?: Analysts and other outsiders—even colleagues at News Corp.—may be stressing over growth and revenue. Those aren’t the focus right now, insist Hirschhorn and Jones, at least not the way these others might expect. (“I’m really happy we have so many people concerned about our future,” Jones says wryly.) “The pair wants to keep the core users MySpace already has and increase their engagement, while converting the “hundreds of thousands” signing up now into regular users. By mining MySpace’s rich data, they’ve been able to spot patterns that suggest different ways to accomplish that for different users—and they’ve decided who they don’t need to cater to. The core demographic is 13-34, representing 56 percent of all uniques, according to comScore; the sweet spot is 18-24. Eighty-four percent of all traffic on the site comes from that core.

As for other MySpace users, explains Jones, “In certain cases if a user ages out, that’s ok. I don’t need to go back and get the 45-year-old housewife and the 55-year-old retired gentleman. I’m happy if they use MySpace but that’s not my focus. Part of the strategy is refining the types of users we really want to own and be very ok with users we don’t want to own.” Another part is to wait to go after users who have left or heavily recruit new users until they feel like the user experience has been fixed. “There’ll be a time when we’re ready to do that,” says Jones. “Until then, we’ll go up some users, down some users. Hopefully, by the end of the year we’ll be comfortable enough.”

Not an empty lobby: New users now see an algorithmically generated set of suggestions of musics, apps and video as part of the set-up. The choices they make become part of their new page, itself a recently redesigned experience. “What was happening in the past is we would get you to join and leave you in an empty lobby,” says Hirschhorn, Now, as Jones explains, they use a mix of info provided by the user—for instance, a horoscope app comes up to match your birthday, IP information, the network and, perhaps most important, if they’ve been invited to join, recommendations based on those MySpace users. “We’re abstracting a profile from a cold start.”

The results so far, says Jones: “We’ve been able to reduce the amount of stranded pages from initial sign ups. Out of x number of a hundred users who sign up, we’ll have a greater percentage today than last month who will continue to use MySpace. We’ve done some good jobs plugging the holes in the sieve.” That blend of discovery and personalization is key to the company’s strategy. They want to keep building new experiences for the user that increase their discovery and the chances of being discovered. In this model, the user page is driven as much by what users add themselves as what they do.

As for the money that might come from that blend, says Jones, “As of right now, I’m not worried about a revenue model around it.” That doesn’t mean they’re cavalier about making money. Nada Stiratt, who worked with Hirschhorn at MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA), came on as chief revenue officer late last year. The personalization should improve reach and targeting.

About that road map: Anyone the least bit familiar with how changes were made at MySpace for years might be amused by a product roadmap that extends for months and then some. The products—including exclusive games being announced this week—focus on social graphs, interests, entertainment and pop culture. Some rely heavily on partners, others are home grown. By the end of the year, Hirschhorn says MySpace should look very different. They’re aware that the pace may seem slow to outsiders—after all, they’ve already been at MySpace for nearly a year—but say they their timeline has support from their direct boss, News Corp. Digital head Jon Miller, and from Rupert Murdoch and Chase Carey. News Corp. wanted to see traffic stabilized, which is happening, and they want to see the new products roll out as expected.

The Google (NSDQ: GOOG) deal:The deal with Google that helped News Corp. defend its price tag for MySpace with a $900 million search revenue guarantee goes through Q2 of this year—and the return is running short because the social net failed to meet its performance goals. What next? The first deal was made without much experience to go on. This time, the results and the failures will be factored into what MySpace tries to accomplish, along with the changes in its own makeup and its brand business. Hirschhorn: “Google is up and certainly we expect to have very fruitful talks with Google and other parties. That’s a deal that not only could be renewed, but it;s also something that we’ve learned about how revenue is made on the site could be to another partner or a series of partners, depending on what makes sense for us and another side.” (I don’t get the sense Hirschhorn or anyone else expects as attractive a deal again. If they do, I want to a shot of whatever they’re drinking.)

M&A: The two are open to acquisitions. Hirschhorn: “If we see an acquisition that really makes sense that not only brings a great strategic value to us but talent, we’re absolutely interested and News Corp. has been incredibly supportive of us on that. Are we on a buying binge? That’s not how we look at it.” So far the iLike acquisition appears to be paying off on both those grounds, with the founders and top execs still at MySpace.

On mobile: Nat Brown, a former iLike exec, is now leading the company’s efforts in mobile, which is growing increasingly important, says Hirschhorn. “Mobile is going to be about everything we do. It’s the remote control of the future. I imagine at some point it is going to surpass the engagement we’re getting on PCs on a daily basis.” It already represents 50 percent of MySpace traffic. [Update: MySpace follows up with a clarification, saying that nearly 50 percent of its audience uses mobile MySpace.]   

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