Social Networking

I have a MySpace account. I never use it. I opened it to see what MySpace was all about. We had just done a story about predators trolling there.

I scouted around and within a few minutes saw the profile of an 18 year old girl. Except, she listed her school – a middle school. It’s both sad and scary.

From time-to-time I’ll get an email from MySpace telling me I have an email on their site. It’s nearly 100% spam&#185. I’m getting to the point where I don’t even bother to check.

I have a Facebook account as well. Again, I don’t use it. In order to sign up, I needed an educational email address, which I had from Mississippi State. It still works!

A few people I know have signed on as friends. A few people I don’t know have asked to be my friend. I’m unsure what to do. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Is a friend on MySpace or Facebook really a friend? Is the word friend, as used on these websites, interchangeable with the word friend we’ve always used? Is this the real future of friendship?

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do on these sites. That’s just a sign of my advanced age, right? Maybe there’s really nothing to do… or I do it here by keeping my blog.

I know Stef has an active Facebook life. I know because she’s told me. As a good father, I stay away.

Maybe I’m better off that way.

&#185 – Unlike my ‘real’ spam, MySpace spam is mainly porn. Porn in real spam has become passe.

3 thoughts on “Social Networking”

  1. I too was curious about MySpace, so I created an account for my dog, Butch the Vizsla. The entire profile is written in his “voice”, if dogs could speak. Every day I get emails from “women” saying they read the profile and thought Butch was really hot, and so on…

    The friends thing is interesting, I think it functions as a popularity contest – the more you have the more popular you are.

    I’ve noticed an interesting industry that has benefitted from MySpace (besides porn) – music. Most bands have pages, and distribute a few of their songs for free play or to add as background music for one’s page.

    Other than that, my dog and I got bored after a day or two of messing with it, and can’t understand what the big deal is all about.

  2. The thing with MySpace is that you have to lock it down as far as you can. I have mine set so that you have to know my name or e-mail address to be able to add me as a friend. I also have it set so that you have to be 18 or older to view me and well pretty much enabled every privacy setting short of having to be my friend to see my profile. Though, I’ve considered that.

    As for Facebook, it’s nicer because it’s pretty well as “walled garden”. You choose who you want to see your profile *and* how much they can see. A lot nicer than MySpace, IMHO.

    -A

  3. MySpace has been a godsend for the independent music industry, but outside of that I really don’t see the point. I have a personal page, but it’s an extension of my job at an indie record label (where I maintain our flagship artist’s profile there, and help with our label’s profile and that of one of the other projects we do). For an indie musician, though, it’s an invaluable way to get an online presence for free. You can get your music out there, post videos, and have real interactions with your fans. It’s also another way for people to discover your music … in fact, I am currently working with a promoter in Japan to bring our artist over there later this year, all because he came across her MySpace page and loved what he heard and saw there! That sort of thing never would have happened a couple years ago, before we got going on MySpace.

    I also maintain profiles on the side for a couple other musicians, and I’ve noticed that somehow the spam level is way down for them, as opposed to my profile which gets spammed all the time. I’m not sure what MySpace has done to help keep the music pages relatively spam-free, but I wish they’d apply that to everyone.

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