I want to delete my MySpace account
I read a post today that pretty succinctly sums up my feelings about MySpace. It got me to thinking, why do I even still use this awful, bloated tool? Mostly it’s because they got my friends before a better site did. If Virb had come out within 6 months of MySpace, everyone would be using it instead. Now MySpace has become this substitute for email and IM and everyone’s too invested to leave.
I really want Virb to take over and see the underdog to win, I know there’s people putting love and hard work into every teeny facet of it’s interface. It’s so easy to use it’s deceptive. Unfortunately, I don’t see people leaving MySpace anytime soon, or at least not leaving it for another social networking site. I really think the only way for Virb to succeed is through promotion and advertisement. The interface is already great, we all already know it’s better than MySpace. You just have to get people there.
Reasons why I hate MySpace
It’s ugly and hard to use
Alana and I both use it, so I frequently have to sign out of her account to get into mine. instead of giving me a new login prompt, or taking me to the home screen when I do this, it just tells me “You have signed out.” Great, thanks.
Spam
Why do bands listing Disturbed and Sevendust think I want to be friends with them?
It’s slow and painful
Everyone has awful customized, seizure inducing profiles that blast me with crappy music.
Bulletins (the bad)
No I don’t care that you posted new pictures of yourself taking pictures of yourself. There’s no nice way to tell a friend they’re an internet a-hole.
Reasons why I continue to use MySpace
Friends
Virb is so much better, but uhh no one is on it except some bands and early adopters.
Most people I know either don’t answer their phone, have spotty service, and never check their voice mail. they also don’t really use their email for much besides registering for MySpace. this means MySpace is the most reliable place for me to communicate with them, which is very sad indeed.
There’s no export from MySpace, and half the people I know didn’t even sign up with their real name. I don’t want to individually add each one of them again in another tool.
Bulletins (the good)
This ties back in to the friends thing. Sometimes these aren’t spam and let me know if my friends are having a party or if there’s a show I forgot I wanted to see.
So I suppose if everyone were to make a massive exodus from MySpace to Virb, I’d delete my MySpace account and deal with the consequences. But really, why can’t everyone just reliably use email?
Is MySpace the only problem?
The virtual world isn’t just limited MySpace. Do I really need a Friendster, a Facebook, a MySpace, a Virb, a LinkedIn, a Twitter, a Livejournal, a Digg, and a del.icio.us? Is there a good way to combine the best features of all without creating a feature-breathing monster? Do we need both a Linkedin and a MySpace to maintain the boundary between personal and professional? My boss is on MySpace, now I regularly play censor to get rid of humping dog pictures in my comments she’d probably think were funny anyway.
Virb is great, but it certainly will never be a replacement for all these things. I think what most of the people using all these tools really want and don’t realize is just an easy way to self-publish all their information on a single website, but that’s a too tech-saavy process for most people even with tools like Wordpress and iWeb. Whatever happens, mostly I’d just like to get rid of my MySpace.
