It’s about time someone said that. Myspace is horribly annoying, with the ability to easily repost chain letters as bulletins, the vulnerability to hacks and spam, the horrendous advertising, the all-too-frequent abuse of HTML that makes pages take forever to load or scroll down, the music players that automatically start, the fact that there’s never a way to confirm ownership of the profile, and on top of all that the frequency with which the site won’t work or only works on certain browsers, it gets easily overloaded if it’s a holiday, etc. I like Facebook a lot more, it’s neater, simpler, I’ve never encountered a hacked profile that posted spam, and you know who people are. If Facebook somehow integrates a music section for bands and such, I think it would easily overtake Myspace. Also, the Facebook developers are a lot more receptive to what their users want and don’t want.
The ability to repost bulletins is fine. Tired of “spam” from a friend? Ask that friend to limit posting per day or DROP THEM.
Easiest ability to opt out of “spam” in the world. And I suggest locking down your profile (don’t let people post unapproved or bands to ask to add you or even people to ask to add you without email/name information). If they really want to contact you, they can still email you on myspace and tell you they’d like to be added.
The repost feature is not automated (you have to cut and paste to do it) and permits your network to exploit the “6 degrees of separation” that allow you to promote an event or news beyond your close circle of friends.
As to hacker exploits. Java controls permit too much control that a stranger should not have. Basic HTML doesn’t need these gadgets. The network community should do a better job shunning glitzy trash to opens to door to hacker control.
It is possible to block the advertising (I did it for awhile using something that scanned for banner URLs and put in a null address). With all of the flash and animated gif advertising now, I want to do that. Good thing is it kills advertising for all sites (including news sites) not just Myspace. Again web advertising is a problem all over the net.
And yes people are using programs to hype up their pages with bad HTML code that takes forever to load even on high speed networkds. Tell your friends they are idiots and have made their pages needlesss complex.
And some site will probably eventually incorporate music and be overtaken by Viacommie. They own Infinity Broadcasting Radio and MTV/BET/VH1 etc. They were offered Myspace before Newscorp but didn’t think you could make money off it.