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my space or yours?

Posted: January 3rd, 2006, by Thorsten Sideb0ard

Ug. I did it, i finally caved in and built a proper myspace page.

I don’t know why, i’ve never like myspace from the beginning. It smacks so much of sheer marketing ploy, it gives me the jeebies. I know about the Robert Maxwell Rupert Murdoch buyout of Intermix Media who own myspace and all that, but i mean even before then.

I jumped onto the friendster bandwagon pretty early. It seemed fun, it seemed like all the san francisco and uk indie-kids and hipsters had effectively taken over a dating site. I like mis-using things, i like other people mis-using things, finding new uses for something the original creator never intended. Then came tribe.net, which i reluctantly also subbed up for. It did seem like a genuinely better community site, more geeky and less fratboy. But still.. i got bored entering all that information in a second time. I got bored after that with community sites.

Then i got my audioscrobbler plugin, and when that merged with Last.fm, here was a true community site that really kicked ass, was genuine about the music, innovative with the features, and i instantly fell in love with it.

Flickr is my other online obsession these days, since i upgraded my camera a few months back. Same story, innovative and easy to use website, and seems genuinely passionate about the content and the users.

So, back to myspace. Whats not to like? Its pretty easy to use, up-to-date features (nothing truly innovative there, just seems like the best features from what has gone before), and i guess thats it. Its the ease of use i guess that gets everyone on board, and now that the whole world and their granny is on there, they pretty much have the dominating force for any would-be music community site challengers to the throne. So what am i griping about? i dunno! Myspace is just ugly and full of too many ads, and i feel like i’m selling out by building my own page, so i guess i’m just venting/justifying/whining!

The thing is, what makes a good community site is having a large community, and myspace now has it, with so many members. Everyone i know is up there, and its good people, its people i really do know and share a life with outside of inter-web-land, people doing and making and promoting great independent music.

But still i can’t shake a sneaky image of boardroom meetings and brainstorming sessions behind the myspace origins, rather than bedroom or garage hackers, and *splutter!* thats, thats just not indie-rock!

( http://myspace.com/highpointlowlife in case you were wondering.. )



Thorsten Sideb0ard



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