The Cabbage Patch

Hello World.

Social networks, it would seem, have taken over the Internet.  Sites like MySpace and Facebook are all the rage with “the kids” nowadays, and you’re no one if you don’t have at least a dozen virtual “friends”.

There are various types of “social sites” available on the Internet, ranging from general purpose meeting places (like MySpace) to special interest or focused communities.  I have featured Last.fm on Da Patch before - it is a social site based around the very specific topic of music.  In this multi-part feature I’m going to discuss some of the other networks that I have begun to get involved in and my thoughts on what they are about.

MySpace

I very intentionally tried to stay off the MySpace bandwagon when I first caught wind of it because it seemed like a lot of whingey teenagers leaving inane comments on each others pages, listening to home-made recordings of their latest acoustic “melodic poem”.  In the last few months, however, it has become apparent that MySpace isn’t going to go away any time soon.  And so, as part of my quest to be involved in everything that happens on the Internet, I have forced myself to succumb to the beast - I have created a MySpace (Question: What is the correct term for one’s MySpace profile page?  “my MySpace”?  “my Space”?  “myMySpace”?).

The first thing I noticed about MySpace was its appalling user-interface.  I mean this thing is horrifically hard to use and as ugly as an unwiped backside - I have no idea how anyone could possibly use it on a daily basis.  Every element of it is simplified to the point that it’s incredibly complicated.  Some aspects don’t seem to make any sense at all - for example to change the look of your profile page you must place the code into one of the About Me text-boxes.  Huh?  There seems to be a page for everything else, why not a “Design” or “Layout” or “Code” page or something?

And whilst on the topic of profile designs, why is it that no matter what I try to do, the page unerringly comes out looking like something from Geocities, circa 1995?

The second thing I noticed about MySpace was the spam.  Within an hour of signing up I had two “Hot Chickz” wanting to be my “friend” if I went to their website and put in my credit card details.  I think, somehow, they may have been lying.  I have noticed that the amount of spam you receive is directly proportional to the amount of activity you engage in on the site.  Immediately after I signed up I received a fair amount of it, but after a couple of days of no activity it stopped.  I’ve had the profile up for a few weeks now, pretty much inactive, and the spam has almost disappeared.  After doing something new, like uploading a picture however, the spam starts again.  This is unbelievably tiresome.

Finally on my list of “things I hate about MySpace” - auto-playing music.  Every second page you may accidentally visit within the MySpace universe has some sort of (usually obnoxious, emo and crap) music blaring out from it as soon as you load the page.  If you make the fatal mistake of opening several MySpace pages at once in multiple tabs, well, you may just find your brain leaking out your ears.

“So, mister, why do you have a MySpace if you hate it so much, you modern-day Scrooge you?”

Simply put, because everyone else does.  And that is not an exaggeration - as of this writing there are 115,320,488 users on MySpace, and that number is growing rapidly.  With that many people involved, some good must surely come out of it eventually.

In terms of content, you can find some good independent music (if you’re prepared to sift through the junk) and a lot of information regarding concerts and albums for many mainstream artists.  On the video side, I haven’t really found anything that isn’t already available on YouTube, but maybe there is something there for someone.

Also, it seems important for a lot of people now that they can contact you on your MySpace.  It’s not uncommon for people I meet around university to ask for a MySpace address rather than say, phone number or email.

So, how ’bout it?  Add me?

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.