Or Myspazz, whatever you want to call it, now currently occupies the block of my time who's last previous tenant was Faceparty (evicted mid 2005). It's something I return to with a faint feeling of distaste - for a variety of reasons but principally because it's one big popularity contest, and I was always the kid at school trying too hard to avoid getting spat on to worry about such things (that or drawing pictures of elves; laughably I didn't see the two as interlinked).
Who do I want to be friends with on Myspace? Well Deven Miles was an easy touch, and The Rub have graciously added me, but I've yet to hear back from Kwite Def of New York's 'Monster Island Czars'. Instead I'm Inevitably being propositioned by all sorts of other chancers.. the best one yet has to be Miki, who might be the campest thing ever, but also wins genius points for having himself in his own top eight, twice.. despite having 300 'friends'. I might simply approve him as judging by his makeup he's invented some kind of time machine and I always wondered what it was like to go out in Stockport in the 80s. Plus he also seems to have red electrical tape wound round his left upper arm, which I can't quite as yet grasp the semiotics of but I'm sure is tremendously important. Anyway. I can't pretend I haven't added people like this previously, but I got laughed at in the pub for it the other day, so might not bother anymore.
But there are other reasons too why Myspace is gash. First off, the dark emperor of Myspace (who also happens to share my 'real' name) Tom. I'll sometimes get all excited when my Gmail account informs me I've a new Myspace message, only for me to rock up and discover his stupid goon face leering out at me accompanied by a message supplying some ragged bit of HTML he wants me to use to patch up whatever errors him and his hired Myspace chimps made programming the site in the first place. Piss off. I wouldn't mind but I suspect he's probably richer off the back of this than I'll ever be, and he could at least do his job without delegating to users.
And the design.. well lets not even go there. 'Counterintuitive' sounds like a vague compliment when actually confronted by the plurality of buttons, tabs and other doohickeys that assault your senses upon opening a Myspace page. It's like someone sneezed Alphabetti-Spaghetti onto the screen: where the fuck is everything? What does this do? Actually sod that, I don't care.
A far better 'thing' I've discovered recently is Last FM, though for some reason it's not updated my chart this week on the right. I feel like my online self is out of sync with the flesh and blood me who has to do boring stuff like eat and clean the bathroom. Any ideas why? Answers to the usual address.
3 comments:
Myspace: Yeah, I also signed up (as you know) but having got my profile down and all that, it fails to hold much interest for me.
Am I supposed to add loads of contacts and hope that they add me too? If so what for? I don’t really see the incentive. What’s in it for me once I have all those contacts? I’m not saying there is nothing, I honesly haven’t spent the time working it out yet!
And as an experienced web designer, I can confirm: in terms of design, usability and technology the website is LAME. Though I’m sure Tom doesn’t really care too much so long as his pennies keep rolling in.
I my last job, we did all the digital marketing for the international launch of Brahma beer and this included working with Tom (Myspace) to set up Brahma actually as a user on the site: An advert as a user!!. Draw your own conclusions...
Last.fm: Now there’s a good idea. And it’s well executed too. They do have a few technical bugs (as do Flickr) but that’s because they’re constantly trying out new things and improving it. It’s part of the whole movement that has been dubbed Web 2.0.
Better than being stuck in the dark ages.
Incidentally, weekly charts is an area they appear to have been having a lot of problems with recently. They were a few days late last week due to some server problems. You can check their support forum for up-to-date system status.
But yes, it bothers me too (much more than it should really), being out-of-date. It’s supposed to update every Sunday night.
Myplace is a marketing man's dream, because 'ver kids' love it, and it cost bugger all.
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