This could be an area where I am out of touch with technology. Many would argue that I am out of touch with the times because of my very conservative and Biblical views and beliefs (to which I will still firmly stand by), but I actually feel I might be missing something with MySpace.
I hope there is not a need to explain what MySpace is. While not a user of the service, I am fully aware of its capacities and functions as “a place for friends.” If you’re reading this wondering “what is MySpace”, you might want to leave this page and do some research of “web” terms, as I will be using a few here.
First let me be forthright in saying that, I do not have a problem with MySpace. This is not a MySpace rant, or rather it is not intended to be that way. Actually perhaps I do not have a problem with the actual administrators and owners of MySpace but rather some of the users. You know the type, those who break the rules, post personal information, or whatever only then to sue MySpace for not protecting them. The same people who do not read disclaimers or blindly accept Terms and Conditions without regard to what they actually are.
But really is MySpace all that great? It has a lot of functions that were already wildly available prior to its existence but there are two major things to note; its free and its under one roof. That’s right, MySpace does not charge for its Email, Blogging, Multimedia posting, Groups, and so on. Naturally you can pay MySpace to go a step beyond the free site but do you really need too? I paid $70 in 2001 for seven years of domain registration and I am paying roughly $14 a month for hosting of this site, am I getting robbed?
My website has a lot of the same functionality that MySpace has, I have a blog, pictures shares, ftp site, email, and so on. A few technical things I have that I do not believe MySpace offers; backups of my site, guaranteed 100% up time, statistical information (on hits, visitors and so forth), and SQL connectivity to mention a few.
So why do I pay for all of this when I can get a MySpace page that will give me most of the same features for free? I really don’t have an answer to that question. Maybe its the same reason that some people think that drinking water from a bottle is cool, or maybe its the same reasons that the guy down the street refuses to put anything in his car but premium gas (as if it really going to matter). I am really missing that much or am I just irritated that I learned the hard way to do a web page back in the old text file days?
I think the best answer for this is I just don’t want or need a MySpace page right now. If I need to join MySpace so a few people I never talked to in high school would add me to their friends list just to look more “popular” to the other people on MySpace, then I do not need them as friends let alone a MySpace account to show that. Good grief couldn’t they just link to my page and I can do the same to their MySpace page. Isn’t that the same really? On a side note, I could honestly say that if the case is as I mentioned above, not much has changed from high school.
Coming soon though, links to MySpace pages of people I actually associate with. First on the list Tom…