Things I Hate About MySpace

I hate MySpace, but then again, so does most everyone else. It’s not news or anything, but it’s just after Christmas and posting is light lately, so I thought I’d get this out of the way before the new year hits and Rand’s bugging me to put up actual, relevant posts.

Anyway, I created an account a few years ago, and within the last year I’ve been letting my account awkwardly hang out by the punch bowl while I make out in a corner with Facebook. Today I logged in for the first time in eons, and I was so frustrated with the experience that I felt the need to share it with my other MySpace-haterz. So, in no particular order, here are things that I hate about MySpace:

1. It takes eons to load anything. What the crap? I have a cable modem, and it feels like I’m back in 1999 trying to download an Our Lady Peace song on a dialup connection. Why the heck does it take forever to load anything on MySpace? I was trying to load a user’s image, for crying out loud, and it went something like this:
   • Click on “Album”
   • Click on first photo
   • Wait
   • Refresh
   • Wait
   • First photo loads
   • Click on photo to see second photo
   • Wait
   • Wait
   • Wait
   • Click “Refresh” eighteen times
   • Blank page loads
   • Raise fists towards the heavens and curse the visual STD that is MySpace
2. Every 3rd click brings up some “internal error.” It’s ridiculous.

   

3. Photo albums don’t give you a “Image 1 of x” status, so I click aimlessly through someone’s album until I realize that I’ve rounded the bend and am 1/3 through it again.
4. I don’t receive any more emails notifying me when I have a new friend request, new comment, or new anything. I understand that it’s a ploy to get you to log in regularly to see if you’ve gotten anything new, but I don’t do that because I largely hate the site, so unless I get some sort of heads up (“Hey Rebecca, we know you hate our site, but your friend just posted a comment so maybe you want to take a looksee”), I’ll continue to only log in once every few months to spy on folks I went to high school with (which is the only semi-useful thing MySpace is good for).
5. It’s made a half-ass attempt to emulate Facebook while still looking as ugly as Michael Douglas between facelifts. I’ve noticed that MySpace has added “Friend Updates” and the ability to tag people in photos, but it feels slapped together and is still wedged between blinking ads, AdSense, crappy featured profiles, and other nausea-inducing atrocities.
6. I’m in my extended network? If I look at my profile page, it says “rebecca is in your extended network.” Uh, yeah, I know that because I’m Rebecca, and that profile you’re showing me is actually mine. Meanwhile, Facebook is smart enough to know when you’re looking at your own profile, and thus it personalizes your profile page with things like “What are you doing right now?”, “View photos of me,” etc.
7. All of the junk I don’t care about is front and center on my profile page. To the left is my profile picture, and to the right is a huge ad, “Cool new videos,” a “Featured Profile,” and “MySpace Links” I don’t give a rat’s ass about. There’s also “Sponsored Links” and a “Featured on Myspace: Comedy,” all on my page. This kind of feels like MySpace’s page that they’re graciously allowing me to use a teeny part of. I will acknowledge that I use the “classic” view (the “new home skin” isn’t much better–it looks like a cheap Facebook knockoff and shoves all of the ads and crap to the left column) because I don’t give a damn about customizing my profile, seeing as how all of the “customized” profiles adrift in the MySpace Sea are akin to loud, obnoxious, fuschia colored, blinking Christmas light-adorned party cruises, while mine is a boring but smooth-sailing and sturdy rowboat.
8. The “New birthdays!” notification basically shows me any and all birthdays, past, present, and future, within a half-month radius. Today it showed me Scott’s birthday, which was about 10 days ago, CK Chung’s birthday, which was December 12, and my friend Kevin’s birthday, which was December 11. It wouldn’t surprise me if my friends are getting a “New birthday!” notification informing them that mine is just around the corner on August 6th.

I’d post more complaints, but frankly this site isn’t worth any more of my time. I know that some of you will undoubtedly post in the comments various ways I can fix #4 or how I can tweak #7 or whatever, but while I could feasibly fix a couple of these things on my own, the bulk of it is MySpace’s offense, and it’s really infuriating that they put out a sloppy service and aren’t on the ball about making positive changes to their site’s look, functionality, and user experience. I don’t care how many people use MySpace or how successful it is right now–I think they could really stand to improve their site if they want to retain even more of a userbase.

Oh, and I’m sorry for ranting, but someone emailed me a while back and complained to me that 1/10 of my posts are of a negative or complaining nature, and I thought “Hmm, that’s only 10%. Surely I can keep that going.” So, in order to meet my internal quota, here’s the negative post. 😉 Happy Friday, everyone!