This is a short post on a topic that drives me crazy. There are many social networking sites on the web. Two I use. MySpace and Facebook. I prefer Facebook. There is a reason for this. I despise MySpace. There is a reason for this, as well.
When the web was just forming, there was also an explosion of website sites. There was Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and scores of others. I had one. I think you can still find it by doing a search for my name. Most were tawdry affairs, thrown together with the building software with no thought of design. The results were not pretty. Backgrounds prevented you from reading the text. Terrible MIDI renditions of popular songs scared you to death as they danced along with animated GIFs. Dear God – animated GIFs!
This is why I hate MySpace. It’s taken the horrible websites of yesteryear and ramped them up tenfold. Instead of MIDIs there are mp3s that play without warning. Instead of GIFs there are actual videos. Sometimes competing for soundwaves with the mp3s. Thanks to the marvel of the Internet I am already listening to my own music.
Despite the heavy introduction of applications, Facebook still remains fairly clean to look at. There are plenty of other annoyances about both reflecting the failur of some individuals to unplug, but I can forgive them.
May 5, 2008 at 1:47 am
[...] More importantly, the MySpace pages could be changed at will, decorated with thousands of pictures, surveys, personality tests and more. For the first time users could embed music and video. It’s possible to set it up so both music AND video play at the same time—perhaps not the most well-intended feature. [...]