Tuesday, March 2, 2010

MySpace

I've only been on Myspace a few times and my major takeaway from my visits was it was a mess. The interface of most peoples profiles were cluttered and unorganized. I found links and information hard to decipher. While I find this to be its demise Levinson points out that this is actually one of its top qualities--the ability to have a lot of information and applications all in one location. While I haven't been on in years I wonder how it looks today--if they have updated the graphics so that everything is more organized and easier on the eyes.

I thought it was interesting when Professor Levinson talked about how they figured out a system that once again did not cost money. I have to wonder if people would pay for Myspace or Facebook. Class vote? I also wonder if we did have to pay if we would have more rights over the content/pictures on our pages.

I think the idea of being able to get your foot in the door without middlemen or experts through all forms of new new media is fascinating. Like Mariel said in her post below this activism in social media within the field one is interested in shows extreme initiative. Journalists have the ability to show off their writing skills through a blog or open news forum. Photographers can upload high quality images to various sites. It seems there are endless opportunities thanks to new new media in all industries.

Just a side note that is kind of interesting, in my marketing class last year we looked at the Myspace to Facebook breakdown in the country and found that Myspace has a greater following in the middle of the country while Facebook is much more popular on the coasts.

2 comments:

  1. That's an interesting question of whether people would pay for the services of Facebook or Myspace. Personally, I wouldn't because I could see an entire new culture of people creating personal websites for the same purposes that would all be linked together.

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  2. I think that once someone starts charging, most folks would migrate to another free service. As for the profiles, MySpace has changed, but made them easier to customize, actually. As opposed to other sites, in MySpace the profile itself can be a creative expression, and while some people don't have the best design sense, it does allow those who do to utilize the medium in a way that Facebook and other sites don't.

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