Myspace is a Headcase.

I surfed over to myspace tonight.

Can a website get any more irrelevant than myspace?

I have over 660 friends there and a few of them are actual friends, people I knew before joining myspace. Of the over 660 friends, it said only one was logged in to myspace. I know there are people who use the site because my news feed is full of useless detritus.

However, they have redesigned the site and it's now sort of a headache to navigate it. I swear that Syd Barrett had a hand in the redesign - at least the Syd Barrett who was so wasted on LSD that he could only stand staring into nothingness during a concert.

I have to assume that Facebook has really taken a huge chunk of usership out of myspace. Even though they have done several site makeovers since I first joined it a couple years ago, it hasn't been as painful to make the change to the new look and functionality there. Not so with myspace.

Myspace used to be THE social networking site. Now it just seems to be a caricature of itself. You know, simplicity is a fine philosophy by which to design. Maybe they should try it. It used to be more pleasant when it was.

Facebook vs. MySpace

I have an account with both sites. I set them up as a way to promote books and reconnect with old college buds.

I used to prefer MySpace over Facebook, but I'm not so sure now.

Facebook is wonky - more so than MySpace. It takes a while to get used to its rhythms and methods. But both sites are fairly silly in their own right. MySpace continues to be a spam avenue for people posting porn sites. Facebook allows you to send virtual gifts to others (I haven't figured out the point of that yet). And I've run into people on both sites who've responded to my friend request with "Do we know each other?"

It's a funny thing to be on a networking site where people resist networking.

However, it's more difficult, it seems to me, to do this on MySpace. There seems to be more resistance to networking there than on Facebook. I've sent out oodles of friend invites on MySpace with few to no results (except for the occasional "Do we know each other?")

On Facebook, it seems to be less of an issue. Most people accept the invite and I've only had one questioner during the time I've been doing this.

I don't think all this social networking has really done a darn thing when it comes to book sales. I certainly haven't seen an increase because of it. But I'll keep on keeping on because there's definitely NO benefit in not doing it.

I Don't Get Facebook

I really don't.

I don't know why people are there, why they sign up for an account.

I don't see the site as being terribly interactive except for some goofiness like building a limited snowman or spending $1 to send someone a small icon of flowers or chocolates. It's also a wonky site, not overly intuitive from the start.

Yet they claim tens of millions of users.

I don't get it.