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MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week
An anonymous reader writes "Hitwise is reporting that MySpace has reached the top, surpassing Yahoo! Mail as the most visited site on the internet for US users. Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two short years, this internet sensation has come quite a long ways. From the article: 'To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits.'"
And boy is that depressing
Consider...
Today, we have online dating, message boards for everything, and web based chat everywhere. If a site isn't dynamic, it's quickly dropped by the online populace. The fact is, this is not unexpected. Myspace.com spent some time developing a site where people could blog and network. It worked for them.
The worrisome part of this is that people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk.
I don't think that the site should be stopped from operating, as I tend to be somewhat of the opinion that if you put your details out there for the world to see, it's your fault if something bad happens. OTOH, people need to think a bit more.
I may be alone in this, but I find MySpace for the most part intensely narcissistic and inane.
People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular. Which is fine, but it shouldn't have the legitimacy of other web content.
In many ways, the whole blog concept has perhaps lowered the barrier to entry for on-line publishing a little *too* far. When anyone can publish anything you want with virtually no effort, then it no longer requires that you be inspired or motivated before your inane ramblings are out there in cyberspace. The media has adopted the trend too, with 'blog' in the context of a news site all too often meaning 'poorly researched and largely content-free "reporting" on sensationalist subject matter.'
Perhaps it's time to move past the blog hype and to consider some method for differentiating personal diaries (i.e., what used to be a personal homepage), social chit chat (i.e., what used to be a bulletin board, IRC, or IM activity), and publications with actual content. Right now the net is awash with an ever-expanding tide of rubbish and there is very little to assist in finding the few really interesting and high quality publications amongst the garbage.
Ultimately it's depressing that, given the ability to communicate our ideas to anyone on earth, most of us can't come up with anything better than pictures of ourselves drinking too much and mass-produced but ineffectual rebelliousness.
Read Pynchon.
Myspace is the most pointless, horribly designed site on the internet.
In other news, MySpace was designed.
Clue to all geeks everywhere:
Nobody cares that MySpace runs on code that is inelegant, nor that it results in sloppy-looking personal pages
It's a big ol' mess, but it's a big ol' mess that a lot of young folks find useful. End of story.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When I first started messing around on the internet 10+ years ago, I used my first name for a couple things. Very quickly I caught on that this wasn't such a great idea, but what I didn't count on is lifelong archival and the rising power of search engines. You see, my first name and last name are rare to the point that I highly doubt anyone else in America has them both. Not completely weird or a made up word, it's just rather uncommon to encounter either one individually, and that makes the combination unique.
So anyway, you need only type my name into Google and have a complete record of every inane thing I ever said back when I was 15 years old. If there is anyone else in the world with the same name, they haven't ever used it on the net. Ok, so it's not particularly damaging information, but it does allow ANYONE to find out that I like Nirvana and Douglas Adams and RPGs and arguing with people. It's rather embarassing, really, to have your semi-profound adolescent musings completely exposed, availible for anyone to read at any time so long as they know your first and last name, but there's really nothing I can do about it. The original archives have been cached by Google and archive.org. Like it or not, I'm immortalized, and I really pity the fools on Myspace who have unique names, or even the ones with common names but specific addresses (or other identifying personal info) posted. In all liklihood every single trivial fact, every single inane/insane rant has been archived *somewhere* and it'll eventually turn up in a Google search. It's irreversable--it's a gigantic bell that simply can't be un-rung.
I shudder to think what would've happened if I made a truly questionable post under my real name. If some teen posts a rant on Myspace that could be construed as racist or radically anarchist or in any other way offensive or unpopular, that rant will be there perhaps for the rest of his life. It will be there every time he goes to apply for a job, and if he was foolish enough to provide such information as a home address he won't be able to claim it's not him. I don't know what there's any real solution for this except education. A lot of people out there don't see the point in anonymity, or even worse they view it as a weakness, a sign of guilt or triviality. Unfortunately, likely they won't start paying attention until criminals and potential employers/friends/lovers alike start turning to Google every time they get curious about their mark/employee/friend/etc.
Actually, we as geeks care. We care because we put lots of effort into making our code work elegantly and our websites look good, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. We care, because we're really great at this stuff, but marketing trumps usability every time. We care because Myspace sucks, but there are millions of people using it, and it's like a big slap in the face for every one of us who put any effort into our work.
qntm.org