MyStalk, a place for fiends
Today's title is inspired by this t-shirt, which still makes me grin. (This doesn't really count as shilling, incidentally. It's just context.)
Okay, yes, I broke down and did the MySpace thing. I can't even recall why- I suspect that someone had some content I wanted to look at and Bugmenot wasn't helpful.
While at the Nicks' place doing playtesting, MySpace came up and Nick (not Nick, but Nick) wanted to add me to his friend list. I'm not entirely sure why- I know that I only have an account really as a placeholder to point people to me, not as an active social networking venue. Yes, it would be nice if social networking really worked, but I think right now the notion needs some more evolution in the real world. At least people are used to it these days.
But social networking definitely can be abused, as evidenced by multiple "Candy wants to be your friend!" "Alexis wants to be your friend!" "Siobhan wants to be your friend!" "Heike V. Greenwood wants to be your friend!", and they all have the same cropped camwhore picture and color text to get you to clicky their linky. Nick's hilarious quote: "The porn bots are getting lazy."
I personally don't need MySpace or Friendster or Orkut or whatever. If you need to find me on teh internets, I leave big fat digital footprints as a consequence of my unique name. Joe Bag-of-Donuts or J. Random Coed probably do.
2 comments:
I've been pretty fed up with MySpace for awhile now too. The interesting thing though is that Facebook, MySpace's college counterpart or competitor, does surprisingly well at the whole social networking game. The content is awesome (you can upload "albums" of photos at a time) and everything is organized allowing no personal background space or songs to be blared while you're trying to look around. The use of groups is well kept, you find friends with greater frequency due to the fact that spambots are very VERY rare, in fact you can RSVP for events online, which has been a tool that I love. You can also "tag" friends in photos, allowing you to trace y our way around the web. As in "Oh, that was you at that party? I was at that party-- let's be friends." In fact when you become friends with someone you give your relationship history. How you met, where you know them from, which friend connected you. All and all-- facebook owns up on MySpace just due to use-ability and organization.
So do you have your myspace still? If so, greesmonkey has some great things to get ride of all the ugly it has.
I keep mine to promote my art. Its the only reason I got it in the first place.
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