Adventures in MySpace : Signing up
For a variety of work related reasons it has fallen to me to head into the realms of MySpace and find out what all the fuss is about. In order to do this I'll be using Internet Explorer, since some early investigations revealed that it's not too keen on Firefox. Lets see how I get on
First impressions are that I've seen much nicer looking sites than this. Never mind the clutter and the need for some serious IA work - it's just primitive. A flat undifferentiated layout that does nothing to please the eye or make life easy for the brain. It's like we never left 1999. Still, onwards.
Signing Up
Signing up presents me with a fairly straightforward form, albeit one that insists I enter a postcode before I can be let in. Presumably this means I can now be shown geo-targetted adverts. Still, once in I'm asked to upload a photo of myself.
Photo supplied I'm then taken to a page where I can invite other people to join myspace. By this stage I've been sent an email to confirm my account (with my password in plain text). I click the confirm link and am taken to a page which tells me 'you have to be logged in to do that'. I login and am presumably confirmed - but I haven't been told so at any stage.
Back in my other browser window I try and invite someone else to myspace and get the message 'Invalid friend ID'. I decide to carry on regardless. To carry on, I try logging out and logging in.
I get a server error
I hit refresh
'You must be logged in to do that'
I login
I get an error
I try the confirm process again
I am shown the 'invalid ID' message again
I press home
I seem to be logged in
Surely this isn't what the cool kids are all doing these days...
First Impressions
I've built nicer looking portals than this
The top third of my laptop screen is taken up with advertising. Below the fold is a prompt asking me to pick my 'myspace name'. I ask for 'corporateantihero'. You can see the results at
http://www.myspace.com/corporateantihero
Looking at this I am delighted to learn that 'Martin is in your extended network' and that Tom from MySpace is my friend. I am also single (wrong) and don't want kids (wrong). Clearly something has to be changed. It is not even remotely obvious what or where...
I click 'home' and am releaved to learn that from here I can now edit my profile and do various other things. I set about editing and discover that I can use HTML (but not script tags). When I update my profile I get the wussiest little 'profile updated' message - someone really needs to show these guys the 'yellow fade' from basecamp.
On viewing my profile again I discover that I now have described my musical tastes but am still single. Back to the edit process where I find some well hidden tabbed browsing options. Filling in these I discover that even though I told the system I was in the UK the postcode I provided (12345) has been mapped to New York. I can specify my height (starting at 1cm) and whether I'm here for dating, serioius relationships or whatever.
I am 1 cm tall and here for friends.
I fill in (or mostly don't fill in) the rest of the profile. I do try and add some music to my profile - which takes me off into myspacemusic. I add a song called 'white girls' by the instantly forgettable 'Five O clock heros' and am reminded of this cartoon
After adding the song I am again told that this is an invalid profile. I click back a lot and manage to get back to my (updated) profile page.
My first big question about MySpace is...
How did something so broken get so popular?
Comments
I'm trying not to ask myself that question too much because I'm afraid I might end up jumping off a high building...
Posted by: Thijs van der Vossen | September 20, 2006 3:49 PM
It got so popular because people NOT LIKE YOU are using it. I doubt that a lot of sceptics biased and preoccupied (cause lets face it, you are doing it only for word reasons and you dont like it) are trying to create a profile and an account there.
Also, most of the people who have accounts there (be aware, I will exaggerate now) were too young to be near a computer on 1999. So the design looks new to them.
MySpace does not have to do with the design or the cool technology or the easiness to build a profile. It only has to do with covering a basic need that other sites do not cover: Having your own space with your own friends, and being able to quickly and easily share a few things. It is different than a blog, it is different than a portal and different than a forum. It covers a need, so people follow it, without caring if technologically it is broken, badly designed etc.
Why on earth does humanity continous to deal with money? We do believe that money is the cause of a lot of evil. Apparently the monetary system is badly designed. But we still use it, because it covers a basic need, and we have no better alternative.
Konstantinos
Posted by: koyan | September 21, 2006 8:05 PM