Friday, January 14, 2011

#224: The Social Network

I.
With MySpace (or My|______| as the logo is now know as) laying off roughly 50% of its staff, it makes me wonder why it can't compete with Facebook or even Twitter.  Maybe it's all the damn ads that surround the home page, people's profiles and everything else.  Or maybe it's because it allows people to customize their profiles at the expense of quick uploads.  Maybe it was the switch to focus more on music because I know that's when I started going to MySpace about once a week instead of everyday.  What was the final nail in the coffin for me was when 90% of my MySpace friends could also be found on Facebook.  I deleted my MySpace sometime in late 2008.

I started my MySpace in June of 2006 which is also when I developed a bigger Internet prescence because I worked overnight with no supervision and had the ability to bypass Internet filters by downloading a new Internet browser (Opera).  I started out with just a few friends (3) but then, somehow it blossomed to an astounding 32 which I was happy with because I'm not one of those people who needs thousands or even hundreds of friends to justify my existence.  But that is probably why I grow bored with social networking sites because I don't have very many friends and the few friends I do give a rat's ass about don't post very often because they all have lives.

At the time I deleted my MySpace, I had 18 friends as opposed to the 30 or so I had on Facebook plus Facebook was a lot more active than MySpace and sent fewer spam email to my message folder.  I went from checking MySpace everyday to once a week and during that week lapse, nothing happened.  So I made the decision to delete my MySpace instead of just letting it hover around in cyberspace and I haven't regretted it.

II.
Why did MySpace lose my interest?  Well, everyone migrated over to Facebook and basically left MySpace like a neglected strip mall.  Sure there was activity and maybe the occasional person but for the most part it was empty and abandoned.  I kept tabs on a couple of friends that were not yet over at Facebook until their profiles became private and I kept tabs on MySpace just to see if the once dominant social networking site would be completely abandoned.  I realized MySpace would never be taken completely down because it is owned by News Corp.  News Corps would, no matter what, take down MySpace because it is still a revenue generator even if only 1% of the 142,000,000 subscribers log-in.  I don't know about you but I'd take that chunk of change every day.  Hell, I'd take it every week.

So now Facebook is entering that realm where it is getting boring.  I don't do any of the games like Cityville or CafeWorld or whatever else is out there partly because that also gets boring but also because my computer is not equipped to run high-powered games.  That, and I'm not a video game guy.  I never was.  I do seem to spend a lot more time on Twitter now and that slightly depresses me but I like Twitter.  I don't even post status updates on Facebook anymore because I am afraid of offending someone.  But on Twitter I can post a quick 140 characters complaining about how much I hate when people talk about how great their family is.  I, nor does anyone else, care.

I'm sure sooner or later I will grow bored with Twitter--but at least not until people stop posting updates and that's a good two, three years away.