I haven’t linked to anyone slagging off MySpace for a while, so here’s a new one (some language NSFW). It’s long, frequently funny and gets extra bonus points for printing a pic of a Goth with the caption “I’m so goth, I shit bats”. But there are some serious/scary points in there too:
Before TV, people thought it would be an incredible tool for education and it would be used for benevolent purposes. It turned out that what people wanted to watch was crap, so the people who made TV made crap. This is what’s happening to MySpace. It’s a great tool at first glance, but the desire to produce crap by those in control of the content (the users) overwhelms the networking aspect almost 5 to 1.
The most depressing bit comes courtesy of the New York Times:
To expand ad sales, especially to big brands, Mr. Levinsohn plans to supplement the MySpace staff with a second sales force linked to the Fox TV sales department. He wants to expand one of Mr. DeWolfe’s advertising ideas — turning advertisers into members of the MySpace community, with their own profiles, like the teenagers’ — so that the young people who often spend hours each day on MySpace can become “friends” with movies, cellphone companies and even deodorants.