Myspace, Friend or Foe?

Myspace is that lovely social networking site that everyone (and all their pets) are signed up to (yup even fictional characters). But I can't decide whether it's a good thing, or a bad thing...

The problem with Myspace is spam and friend collectors. Now I've been bad in the past and I have some of these "friend collectors" on my list. Why? I dunno really, I think I was being just as bad when I first signed up. At the same time, I wanted to add people that looked interesting that I might be able to have converstations with. Partly promoting, partly just having a general natter about my likes and dislikes (the usual every day converstations).

Through Myspace I have indeed met some of these awesome gems of people who will have fantastic conversations through comments or PMs (private messages that is) and I wouldn't trade these people for the world, even if I only know them through the t'internet (I met my other half through the net, and a lot of my closest mates who I've since met in person). I'm sure these people, who may be reading this, know who they are!

But these are a small minority of people who have added me to their friends lists over the past year or so that I've been on there.

The amount of bands, comedians, politicians and worst of all porn bots, that try to add you, is just unbelievable! Now if I want to add a band, I will do. I blocked the invites from them a long time ago when I was recieving about 20 band invites A DAY! So if you are a friend collector, don't ban the bands, you'll have a million friends in no time! Most of these bands are shit! People that have thought it was cool to get a band together and pump their bullshit out over the internet even though they haven't got a single ounce of talent between them.

Now there are good bands on there too, don't get me wrong. I've added a fair few to my list. But I find even they struggle to have geniune fans adding them, and they'll have a zillion people add them that ignore them, post "ADD ME" comments on their page and just added them because they had a zillion friends already.

Myspace isn't just for friends, it's for networking too. I've met a few really good contacts through there for my tshirt company. A few of these I will probably mention on here at some point, and show you a bit of what they do. But I find that even the networking is watered down with garbage too. The number of "artists" or "musicians" on there who are 14 year old girls and boys who would like to be these things to appear "cool" but haven't got any artistic flare at all.

I don't claim to be a designer, I like to draw, and though it's not everyone's cup of tea, some people actually like and buy the pictures I create on tshirts, stickers, pins etc. But I am no designer, you want to be looking up Travis Smith or DarkicoN for your CD covers or Squink!, Tado or Tim Biskup for your designer toys or others who do different design work in different shapes and forms who actually do it as a career. I just like to have a creative outlet, I'm not going to have my designs in a gallery, and I don't pretend that I ever will do. At the end of the day, I play and write music, I just haven't the equipment just now so I'm finding somewhere else to put my creative ideas into.

I do get upset when I post up a new blog or bulletin where no one (other than the select handful that read everything) reads them. I always miss bulletins because there are far too many people on my list that post up rubbish (PC4PC anyone?) so I miss the important bits, but I'm glad to see that I can now see on my "home" page when my friends post up a new blog so I can read and leave comments on them, or when they add new pictures or update stuff on their pages. I find that when I subscribe to people's blogs I end up forgetting to have a look, so this makes it a lot easier for me to see the latest stuff.

Even when mentioning this blog on Myspace, there were only a handful of people who responded (and/or looked) to one of the many bulletins I'd posted about it. It confirmed to me just how few people actually cared about what I was posting up, and gave more reason to why I started using this blog instead.

It's very frustrating when all you want is a response, a sign to say that people are paying attention whether it's another page view or a comment or a message relating to it. It's not just personal messages, it's asking for feedback, it's informing people, it's promoting, it's everything I post up that seems to just end up on the heap with everyone elses messages that people couldn't be bothered with. And I know it's not just me that gets a bit frustrated by it all or gets ignored.

Today I went to have a look at a blog posted up by a band I love to bits, Blinded Colony. Now they'd posted up on Tuesday this week (today being Thursday) asking if people could vote for them, and out of 13450 "friends" only 11 people (including myself) had bothered to vote for them. 11!!! It's pathetic! And out of those, I was the only one to reply to the original blog post to confirm I'd voted and to wish them luck.

Depressing.

So, Myspace, Friend or Foe? Well it's good in some ways, I've managed to get back in contact with people I thought I'd lost contact with (though did the same on Facebook), I've heard some new bands, and have managed to hear music by artists I probably wouldn't have otherwise, I've made some great contacts for the store, and found out bits and pieces faster than I would normally have done. But it's full of fake people, friend collectors and spammers, you just have to be aware of these things, and if you're smarter than me, only add people you already know!