17 December 2007

Social Networking for Grownups: Part 1, MySpace


This one is really the easiest to dispense with, because it's really not for grownups. MySpace has a busy look to it, and its communications tools are quite simple and not very useful to me. I created a MySpace page to check it out, but I look at it rarely, and I have just 12 "friends", most of whom are musicians I like.

Music is the best thing about MySpace, and the worst. It works well as a platform for musicians and bands to promote themselves, and I have found some new music through its connections. On the other hand, I personally hate web pages that play music when you go to them, and MySpace pages are designed to work that way.

MySpace has always had a heavily commercial feel, and the user is bombarded with ads at every step (even before News Corps bought it). MySpace seems to work well for its target audience - pre-teens and teens who use it as a gossip amplifier - and for them it's clearly irresistible. For me, it's pretty useless as a social networking tool, but handy for tracking music.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nicely said.
You should do a post about 8hands or others profile aggregators. I find it really helpful in managing more than one social network.