Okay, the MySpace joke is over

MySpace really irritates me. Sure, I’ll admit it, I do have a MySpace account; and I’ll even go as far as saying that I was fascinated by it at first just because of the amount of people who had a profile. I did the typical, “Oh my god! So-and-So! I haven’t seen him in ages!” thing. I was even known to post a “bulletin” or two. But the awesomeness quickly faded and I realized what a hack the site was. The problem is that not everyone sees it that way and that’s bad because people are getting the impression that MySpace is an excellent model for a “social network”.

I’m serious, they will soon need to hold meetings for MySpace addicts. People you would never guess to be online have clamored to this site and are junkies and can’t wait to get their next fix. It’s tragic too because that was the big introduction to something more than email to a lot of people.

The brainwashing isn’t the only thing that rubs me the wrong way about MySpace though. As a web designer, it’s a nightmare. A huge, hacked-together, clunky mess of a nightmare; and that’s not to say anything of what the users add to the mix when they get to “coding” their custom profiles. Wow. This huge stew of badness results in loads of “technical difficulties” and slow page loads. It’s just a horrible pollution of the internet.

As I mentioned, I was amazed at the amount of long lost friends I found using MySpace; and that’s the meaning of a social network. But it wasn’t long before the landlord of the sister of a friend of a friend of a friend of the guy I met last Tuesday at a convention for two minutes started requesting to be my friend. And then some girl named Veska wanted me to add her and then go check out her webcam where she promised to do interesting things for me. Soon I had 7.3 billion friend requests for people I never heard of, bands I wouldn’t be interested in and movements I certainly wouldn’t protest with. That isn’t a social network, that’s a race and a huge marketing tool.

Eventually you’ll realize that MySpace is owned by the (evil) News Corp conglomerate and is really only a huge billboard; with a great range of user demographics that advertisers love to try to sell to. It’s really just a huge advertising machine, yet zillions of people are still fascinated with it.

So what to do? There are lots of alternatives; with admittedly a smaller user base, but the one I’m making a plea to is Vox.com.

Vox is pretty new on the street and it’s beautiful. Vox gives users a blog (yourclevername.vox.com) and has a community that you can connect it to, with all the bells and whistles of photo sharing, RSS feeds even the obligatory “what I’m reading/listening to”. The layout is elegantly slick and you can actually read something on the page. Aesthetically there’s no comparison, but since you asked…

Here’s a typical cluttered, headache and seizure inducing, horizontal scrolling disorganized MySpace page (click it to see it full size, if you dare):

And for comparison, here is a beautifully orchestrated, easy-on-the-eyes, organized Vox page:

So where are the hordes of people coming over to this and leaving MySpace behind? Egh, they’re busy arranging their top 8, hacking their CSS to make the playboy bunny blink and trying to figure out “this photobucket” thing. The real reason is that, unfortunately, MySpace did it big and for whatever reason people chose it over the competition. Given this, who would want to abandon their friends? Certainly there would be a few to move with you, but there are those that would rather go down with the ship.

This leaves one question: How can the good people of Vox bring the MySpace crowds who are willing to switch over without them losing contact with their closest pals and the people who they’ve never met but claim them anyway? Portability. It would be simple for Vox, or any other social networking site for that matter, build a tool to harvest the data of profiles on MySpace and bring them into a user profile on their site. That way the more cultured user can claim their friends over at MySpace and still share that connection, just not on MySpace. Then, to reciprocate the bond; the user need only to post one final bulletin with a small snippit of code (to display their profile) wishing everyone well, and asking to place the code on their page so they can still be friends.

So that’s your challenge Vox team, if you build it they will come (probably). And to everyone else, do yourself a favor, drop the MySpace stuff and move over to a better site and take your top 8 (or 16 or whatever they’ve developed a hack for these days) with you.

Tags: design, myspace, social networking, vox