Myspace

In all honesty, it's been a very long time since I've been on Myspace to view other people's profiles. Since switching to Facebook over five years ago, the only reason I have visited the site is to view musicians' profiles. Over the past year or so, I have been very impressed with the new Beta version of the site. On the musicians' profiles, things seem to have been cleaned up a lot; the layout is much simpler, there are very few flashy elements, which makes it much more pleasant to use.

However, for this assignment, I have looked at 15 random user profiles. Unlike the nicer music profiles, these individual profiles have not changed much since I left years ago. I was bombarded with flashy backgrounds, which obscure text and content, generic "Myspace" pictures, and so many things seemed to be flashing. It reminded me of when we discussed web 1.0 in class; everything was way too overdone, which made usability very hard. In retrospect, this is exactly why I left Myspace for Facebook, and I'm most people feel the same way. Facebook emphasizes the content, Myspace emphasizes the show.

I will, however, continue to visit Myspace profiles because it is a convenient and easy place for upcoming musicians and DJ's to show their material. This, in my opinion, is the only real reason why the site still exists.