MySpace. Facebook. And all their lesser-well-known cousins. From one point of view, useful tools for connecting with friends and family all over the globe, and creating contacts with others of like mind and interest. Viewed from another perspective, insiduous time-wasters that can eat the hours away faster than a quick trip over the International Date Line. Fun, functional, and silly, with the ability to make any unsuspecting citizen become as glassy-eyed and drooling as a Wii-player on crack.
I've had a MySpace for years now. It's where I post concert photos, write blogs/recaps of shows I have seen, and help support and promote the lovely Greek guy featured in the pic below. :) It's more or less evolved into a promotional page for him but still has my personal touch. I joined Facebook about a year ago, and that's pretty much just a playground for me.
I like the flexibility of MySpace, and how each individual user can customize it with options that are almost limitless in regards to fonts, colors, layout, adding photos and music, and so on. It has been a great way for me to connect both with old friends as well as new friends I acquire through the course of following my interests. I think they provide a great opportunity for artists and musicians to set up a website to help promote themselves and their work, share music, post upcoming concert dates, and foster a thriving fan community. Unfortunately I have also seen individuals use the easy anonymity of these sites as a breeding ground for mischief and personal attacks, and I am aware of the concerns that have been raised by parents regarding the predator possibilty.
About a year ago my pal C invited his fans to all come on Facebook. A huge bunch of us all joined at once, and for a couple weeks there it was a frenzied fiesta of fun as we all friended each other and added all the goofy applications. Creating your "Top Friends" lists, sending each other virtual drinks, flowers, puppies, "pokes" and hugs; turning each other into vampires and zombies and pirates. Adding favorite songs, taking movie quizzes and determining "which Beatles song are you?" and trying to come up with clever status updates. I became a Vampire Mistress with an army of 13, "poked" almost everyone I knew and became quickly addicted to "Scrabulous," the virtual version of Scrabble. It was quite frightening how quickly one's free time could get eaten away playing with the seemingly endless supply of enticing new applications, that all tried to force you to invite your friends to add as well. And even "buy" your friends. (Right now I'm available for about $74,000. Hee!!) I can see how kids and teens could find this an endless playground of fun. But for me, soon the novelty did eventually wear off, and I've pretty much stopped using the majority of the aps.
Both sites can be clunky to operate at times, and in both places users can get a little carried away with forwarding all those cutesy pics, messages, and virtual chain letters a bit akin to blackmail at times ("If you don't send this message back, I'll know who my REAL friends are,") etc. One thing I really like about Facebook is the capability of sending messages to several friends all at once. Several of my good buds have been using this as a kind of chatroom and it works really well for us. But Facebook seems to have more error messages come up, and when people have 40,000 applications added to their page you may as well go out for dinner before you can expect their page to load. Annoying.
I also like how you can "create events" and invite others, which has been a useful tool for promoting my fave cause. ;) Too bad Scrabulous is in limbo; the official Scrabble version that stomped it out in an angry huff just doesn't quite work as smoothly. But I still get a kick out of seeing the Status Updates. And enjoy the occasional virtual Flaming Moe.
Just be sure to forward this message to everyone you know (including me), so that I know you are my bestest friend forever. xoxo
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