January 30, 2008
International Delete Your MySpace Account Day
WUSA has the story of Newport News, Va.-based reporter Simon Owens, who has started a movement to make today, January 30, International Delete Your MySpace Account Day. The idea, which appears to have gained quite a bit of traction all over the internet, was born out of frustration with the amount of spam Owens has been receiving thanks to his account on the popular social networking site.
MySpace, despite its impressively ugly design and clunky architecture, certainly still has its uses, being a platform for independent bands to get their music out into the wider world chief among them. But we couldn't help thinking when we first read about this story: people still have MySpace accounts? It's long appeared that Facebook.com, which lately has been the source of far too many virus-style spam-generating quizzes and games itself, has supplanted MySpace, as the supreme social networking platform. Before MySpace it was Friendster, and surely something else will eventually come along to knock Facebook down a peg. So maybe Owens is on to something here: is it time for a formal, mass exodus from MySpace?
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Gotta love Generation Me. Besides bands posting music, I never understood the self absorbed, personal blog with pictures. (Like anybody really gives a shit about you what you're doing or your silly emoicon.) Gen Mes love them some them. I guess being a Gen Xer maybe I'm just still too full of angst...
I am not a huge fan of any social networking site, but there is a pretty hilarious Facebook group out there called, "If I wanted to be on MySpace, I wouldn't have gone to college"
I'm not on MySpace or Facebook. I don't get the appeal of those sights.
Kids today, sheesh.
I prefer meeting people by calling party lines and then breathing heavily and asking who's out there.
My only New Year's Resolution was to shutter and stop caring about all of the Friendster/MySpace/Facebook crap. Mission Accomplished! I kept my LinkedIn account because that might actually be useful, maybe...
In my day, we used to go to open house on New Years, cotillions, and box socials. Why, Facebook ain't nothin' but a waffle iron with a phone attached!
So I decide to give this Gen-Y "social networking" thing a try. Imagine my annoyance when I attend my first ice cream social and find everyone giving eachother frogurt enemas. It's almost as irritating as when everybody asks me if I know Tyler Durden.
MySpace officially became 100% worthless the day Facebook introduced band pages. The Delete Your MySpace day thing was just a good reminder for me that I still have a MySpace account, and should probably delete it.
The whole "delete your MySpace Account" thing shouldn't necessarily mean "and replace it with Facebook"...
Danah Boyd, a University of California academic, recently published a paper arguing that there is a clear class divide vis-a-vis Facebook vs. MySpace users. Basically, college-educated urban dwellers tend to use Facebook, sez Boyd, while less-educated folks in the hinterlands or whatever use MySpace.
I don't have an account on either, so I guess I don't exist.
DCGent -
That would make sense because for a long time Facebook was just for college students. It recently expanded to all people. Myspace, however, has always been available for anyone over the age of 12.
I dont see a problem with social networking sites as long as it doesnt interfere with your day to day life. There's too many people addicted to this stuff.
I think it's hilarious that this thread has turned into an excuse for several people to complain about how silly and useless they think social networking sites are. The existence of MySpace and Facebook is what has allowed some of us to maintain friendships with people around the country or around the world with whom we'd otherwise lose touch. I think that's pretty valuable, and the mere existence of vain and/or lame people who use social networking to exhibit their vanity/lameness does not diminish the obvious usefulness of social networking to the rest of us.
All your commentary says is that you probably don't do anything worthwhile with your time.
@thefreefood: Actually, my biggest complaint about social networking sites, or at least the big three, has nothing to do with the vanity and/or lameness of its denizens, it's that they a) are horribly coded, b) possess horrible user interface design, and c) look pretty damn ugly even without the seventeen million ads. Add onto that privacy concerns, general uselessness, increased spam, etc. and well, time to get off that ship.
Myspace especially, justjack75.
These days, there's only two reasons I go check my MySpace page - to delete some spam friend requests (bands/organizations/"girls" I've never heard of) or to get a seizure from watching some 13 year old girl's over-animated black background yellow text with really bad music page.
Oh sure, I'm only on Facebook for the dumb quizzes, but at least it doesn't make my eyeballs bleed.
How did people keep in touch before MySpace/Facebook? There's this thing called email...
My big objection to all social networking sites is the huge time drain, and the fact that if I don't want to waste my time on them I constantly get "what do you meeeeeean you're not on Facebook?!?!?!!11!?!!?!"
Yeah, I know I'm commenting on DCist which is technically a waste of time too, but I'm not forced to make updates here every time my relationship status changes...
just do what you want, who cares?
Wow, eloquent MSto. Thanks for pointing that out. Genius.
I only keep my Myspace profile around so I can lurk on my high school classmates' pages and see who's had their 3rd child by age 25.
I keep Facebook around for the sweet NES Games application.