Thanks For The Add!! (MySpace)
Long ago, in a place far, far away, a young man was hired by a bunch of spammers and asked to pimp their latest online service. That site was MySpace, and long have I dreaded this day.
MySpace has been around for a while now and up until recently I have avoided it like the plague. Partly because of the the reputation it has as being a hangout for teenagers and people who like to hang out with teenagers, but also because every time I stumble across someone's profile the overwhelming ugliness drives me away. I guess its safe to say then that I did not hold MySpace in very high standing. Unfortunately a number of my friends didn't share my distaste for the uglier side of the Internet and begun setting up profiles of their own. As a result I was left with a decision; ignore this and become an outcast to my closest friends or swallow my pride and join in. Using this project as an excuse I took the plunge and created an account.
The initial sign up process was much as I have come to expect, enter an email address, choose a password, tick a few check boxes and you're in. From this moment onwards you are drawn into a dangerous world of never ending information requests; What is your height /weight / address / favorite movie / blood type? It doesn't seem to end. Its a concern that there are people out there more than willing to upload this kind of information without thinking about who can access it, but more disheartening is that there are others actively seeking out this kind of information for there own twisted purposes. Once through the personal info minefield I was able to start customising my profile.
I uploaded an avatar image, entered some more personal information and figured I was about done. Checking out the profile though, everything looked very bland and there didn't seem to be anywhere to make it look all pretty like everyone else's. No problems, I just clicked on the out of place looking animation on anyone's profile page advertising where they got their custom layout from. It soon became apparent that all this styling resulted from some shifty CSS coding, so armed with a friends example I set out to make my own. After an hour or so of style sheet hacking and looking around Flickr for a usable image, I had something I was fairly content with. To say the process was easy would be a lie.
MySpace seems to have something against anyone from within the online development community, which seems explains the resentment commonly express. Sure you can link to external image or flash source, but try and include some javascripting and you are shot down. Similarly if you want to include a custom style sheet on your page, there is obvious area to add your code you simply have to append it to the bottom of an existing information area. And don't even get me started on the horrendous table based layout and how difficult it makes any CSS changes.
Working with other online services is also somewhat of a taboo as I am yet to discover any way to export anything entered and a MySpace account is needed to view things such as pictures. Understandable as user generated content is their bread and butter, but annoying to anyone that may wish to move there photos, blog entries or movies to another service; something you would definitely want to do as additional features such as video uploads and blogging can't compare to those offered by more specialised Web 2.0 services.
So why the hell is MySpace so popular? The one thing I've found that MySpace does well is Social Networking. I haven't spent much time Socially Networking, but its hard to fault the MySpace friends system. Find your friends via name, e-mail or user name, ask to be added to their friends list and wait for a response. Simple and effective, a nice change from pretty much everything else MySpace offers and certainly something many find addictive.
On the whole, MySpace has turned out to be pretty much what I expected, a bloated and ungainly yet sadly popular social networking service. The one thing that will continue to bring me back though is the same thing that got me involved in the first place, my friends. I just hope they stop embedding auto playing music.
Categories: Web2.0, MySpace
MySpace has been around for a while now and up until recently I have avoided it like the plague. Partly because of the the reputation it has as being a hangout for teenagers and people who like to hang out with teenagers, but also because every time I stumble across someone's profile the overwhelming ugliness drives me away. I guess its safe to say then that I did not hold MySpace in very high standing. Unfortunately a number of my friends didn't share my distaste for the uglier side of the Internet and begun setting up profiles of their own. As a result I was left with a decision; ignore this and become an outcast to my closest friends or swallow my pride and join in. Using this project as an excuse I took the plunge and created an account.
The initial sign up process was much as I have come to expect, enter an email address, choose a password, tick a few check boxes and you're in. From this moment onwards you are drawn into a dangerous world of never ending information requests; What is your height /weight / address / favorite movie / blood type? It doesn't seem to end. Its a concern that there are people out there more than willing to upload this kind of information without thinking about who can access it, but more disheartening is that there are others actively seeking out this kind of information for there own twisted purposes. Once through the personal info minefield I was able to start customising my profile.
I uploaded an avatar image, entered some more personal information and figured I was about done. Checking out the profile though, everything looked very bland and there didn't seem to be anywhere to make it look all pretty like everyone else's. No problems, I just clicked on the out of place looking animation on anyone's profile page advertising where they got their custom layout from. It soon became apparent that all this styling resulted from some shifty CSS coding, so armed with a friends example I set out to make my own. After an hour or so of style sheet hacking and looking around Flickr for a usable image, I had something I was fairly content with. To say the process was easy would be a lie.
MySpace seems to have something against anyone from within the online development community, which seems explains the resentment commonly express. Sure you can link to external image or flash source, but try and include some javascripting and you are shot down. Similarly if you want to include a custom style sheet on your page, there is obvious area to add your code you simply have to append it to the bottom of an existing information area. And don't even get me started on the horrendous table based layout and how difficult it makes any CSS changes.
Working with other online services is also somewhat of a taboo as I am yet to discover any way to export anything entered and a MySpace account is needed to view things such as pictures. Understandable as user generated content is their bread and butter, but annoying to anyone that may wish to move there photos, blog entries or movies to another service; something you would definitely want to do as additional features such as video uploads and blogging can't compare to those offered by more specialised Web 2.0 services.
So why the hell is MySpace so popular? The one thing I've found that MySpace does well is Social Networking. I haven't spent much time Socially Networking, but its hard to fault the MySpace friends system. Find your friends via name, e-mail or user name, ask to be added to their friends list and wait for a response. Simple and effective, a nice change from pretty much everything else MySpace offers and certainly something many find addictive.
On the whole, MySpace has turned out to be pretty much what I expected, a bloated and ungainly yet sadly popular social networking service. The one thing that will continue to bring me back though is the same thing that got me involved in the first place, my friends. I just hope they stop embedding auto playing music.
Categories: Web2.0, MySpace
posted by Adam at 1:37 PM
1 Comments:
Hehe sucker. My mySpace is only being used for the holiday.
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