The Worst of MySpace*

I’ve taken a long hiatus from posting anything here on Worst, mainly because it was just getting boring. MySpace sucked — and still sucks — and nothing exciting was going on in the world of social networking. One can only look at so much glitter text before you start thinking about hijacking a loaded school bus full of teens and veering it off a cliff, just to do what you perceive to be a favor to the Internet. Plus it wears on your soul, just picking on people’s crappy MySpace profiles all the time. A lot of negative energy emanates from my black heart, but not that much.

Things get interesting again

Just over a year ago, I predicted that Facebook would wipe out MySpace. MySpace isn’t gone (yet), but Facebook is suddenly the hot sh*t after it opened its platform to developers, while MySpace remains stagnant and buggy. (If it’s any hint, the biggest source of traffic to Worst of MySpace are the search keywords “myspace errors”).

Before today, I’d said that this was the death knell for MySpace: Facebook gets it, they choose to evolve, MySpace chooses to pull a Friendster. And so things go.

Google gets in the game

But now, in a challenge to Facebook Apps, Google is introducing OpenSocial, which aims to be sort of a meta-platform for creating social networking -based applications (or SNBAs, which is an acronym I just invented).

OpenSocial apps will be able to run almost anywhere, like on this crappy blog, and not just on a social networking page. Already, Google has partnered with companies like LinkedIn, Friendster (ha!), Salesforce and now MySpace; developers will be able to tap into your friend bases on these networks.

Just imagine! Once a Facebook phenomenon, you’ll now be able to “Throw Sheep” at your associates on LinkedIn or Salesforce, too!

The future

The potential is enormous. For a long time, social networking on the Internet has yielded absolutely nothing worth a monkey turd. Now, people are figuring out how to tap into all these superfluous connections we’ve made to actually do something with them. What remains to be seen is if people can build things slightly more awesome than Superpoke.

Worst prediction: The next killer app arises out of OpenSocial in 2008.

As far as this blog is concerned, I’m not ruling out some angle with all the terrible MySpace profiles, but let’s just say it’s not going to be the sole focus anymore.

I’m hip, I’m cool.
Dukka dukka dukka …

From News.com:

MySpace.com announced on Thursday that it will be hosting a series of so-called town hall events with many of the candidates who are vying for nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries.

But the real question is, will Bill O’Reilly be hosting it, or Sean Hannity? Or Rupert Murdoch himself?

Yes, my little pawns. YESSSS! Feed into the evil!

Full story

Cash would have totally hated MySpace.

I get a pretty steady stream of hits and comments on my posts about MySpace errors from teh Goggles and other Interwebs search bots. In fact, they’re my most popular content. A lot of people have been complaining about not being able to send messages over a long period of time, and now I’m experiencing something similar.

I honestly don’t send a lot of messages on MySpace anymore, but there are a couple few people I talk with regularly (read: cybersex). For the past five days or so, messages to a certain someone have vanished into thin air, not even giving me the famous error message or anything. Just nothing in the Sent folder.

The workaround seems to be to copy your message before sending, then go back and paste your message into a new message and send again. The second-send seems to work for whatever reason.

I tend to take my sweet ass time composing messages, so maybe something is timing-out (perhaps a session thingy, if you’re Geek). I don’t know.

But this is one of the reasons why I’m still predicting MySpace’s imminent death. With all the social networking competition, something so poorly engineered and as fun to use as a tax form can’t last. People will discover that there are progressive, friendly products out there (like Facebook), and find themselves subconsciously gravitating toward them, until a critical mass is reached and the scales tip.

Has anyone checked out Ning, by the way?

View profile | Google snapshot

Today’s crappy MySpace profile is JIMMBAY1 (Thanks, His Royal Flyness!) It’s an insane conglomeration of pirates and leprechauns and Injuns, or whatever they’re calling The Red People these days.

Red-Americans? Heathen-Americans? Pre-colonial Americans? Possible-Asians-Who-Came-Over-the-Bering-Land-Bridge-Americans?

Whatever. I can’t keep up anymore. Every year after college, you stop caring less and less about these things. Then, one day you wake up and you’re a Republican frump with penny loafers, Costco jeans and a tucked-in polo shirt, wondering whether it’s best to get a shotgun or a 9mm for home defense against a potential darkie invasion (it happens all the time on the news, you know.)

Anyway, this profile sucks, yadda yadda yadda. I’m tired. Plus, I get a lot of enjoyment reading your comments. There’s really some brilliant stuff in there, so I’m hoping you bastards can get back into it after my extended absence.

“Dude, where did you go?”

“Dude, your site makes me lmao! Come back! lololololololol!!!!1111oneoneone”

“Dude, I hate you and I hope you’re dead. Don’t RIP. May demons eternally feast on your flesh in Hell.”

I’ve been reading these and many other cheerful comments since I went into hibernation four months ago. Jesus! Four months? It was supposed to just be a quick, post-masturbation nap. Egh.

Just kidding - I’ve never touched myself in that way*. Actually, I’ve been doing an experiment.

See, I’ve been hearing hear Dane Cook and other celebrity MySpace whores who think they’re the hottest shit since the Cleveland Steamer (but really aren’t) constantly dropping the number of unanswered MySpace messages and friend requests they have in interviews and such:

Oh, yeah, man. My fans are great. My fans are awesome. I use MySpace to CONNECT with them. It’s really great. I have over 1.5 million unanswered messages. It’s really great. [makes GOOFY FACE & METAL SIGN]

Yeah Dane, you’re awesome.

Anyway, I’ve been on a quest for the last four months; an in-depth investigation into the psyche of the Internet-based egomaniac, building up unanswered friend requests and messages into the tens - maybe twenties - in order to better understand those who believe that unanswered messages are a valid measurement of their talent.

I haven’t left you, dear readers. Nay, I have been sacrificing for you, building up knowledge, skillz and mana to better attack those who have attacked us, with their vile MySpace pages slathered in eyeball-hating venom of raucous colors, aggravating animations and that James Blunt song.

Worst is back in efizzect. Until my next nap.

* This is a lie.