I had originally an account with Myspace [notice I'm not linking to it] that was only used for obtaining pictures of my favorite bands. I never took full advantage of the site by making friends with everyone. I was happy using it for my own needs. After receiving many emails regarding friend requests that nearly all involved some scam to send traffic to either sex or pharmaceutical sites, I had enough. Feeling empowered during Simon Owen’s International Delete Your Myspace Account Day, I mad my request to close the account and life was good.

My membership to Last.fm was in part due to experimenting with the many features that Banshee had to offer. Banshee is to Linux what iTunes is to the Mac, minus the iTunes store. One of the features it had was a plugin to “scrobble” your tunes to an account at Last.fm. This gives you the ability to keep track of music you’ve just played, share them with others, and learn about bands that might appeal to you that you may not have known to exist. You can also join groups and be-friend other users, but with an apparently better class of people than you’d find at Myspace. This you gives other sources of music you can have streamed to your player and enjoy what others are listening to. All around, a win-win scenario.

From there, I joined Twitter. Twitter was founded on the idea of supplying a personal feed to users to share what they were doing through the course of the day. Posting “tweets” throughout the day, your friends could follow your experiences while “tweeting” back to you about what they were doing. The infrastructure has found other uses by coordinating people’s experiences during major events like the recent rampage through the city of Mumbai.

Personally, it was fun for about a week. It’s a novel idea and it has certainly found a niche that many people find useful. I can’t find a need for it that anything else I already use couldn’t perform the same functions. I also don’t need to know what others are doing in real time. If I’m not there to share the experience with them, then they can tell me about it the next time we visit.

Then came Facebook. Oh a whim I gave it a go. I was immediately surprised to find family members that also had accounts there and be-friended them quickly. They introduced me to some of the activities, applications as Facebook calls them, which helped to immerse myself into the Facebook world. However, it weren’t for the applications, I would probably have gotten bored with it soon after joining.

The part of Facebook I find most troubling is how advertisement driven it is. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it’s great to see a company supplying an entertaining social environment for free and having it fully funded through advertisements. But, a lot of those advertisements are the same annoying ones I find elsewhere. They’ve also engineered a few adverts to seem as though they’re another Facebook application. There was IQ challenge that was making it seem as though a friend had initiated it. After the fifth page of bypassing special offers just for me so I could see my IQ score, I finally gave up leaving the test a bit wiser than before.

So with that, I learned to discern and ignore the advertisements, or at the very least make sure I don’t visit with a browser that doesn’t utilize an ad blocker and/or script blocker. With the said sad ads now blocked, Facebook is much more enjoyable and easier to navigate now that there’s less load on the browser.

So in the end, I still use Last.fm. I’ll find a use for Twitter some day, just not anytime soon. And Facebook has some addictive games to play with friends. I found a lot of other great online games to play, but I’ll save those for another day.

And with that, I place the final nail in this coffin and live on.

Facebook came with the surprise of finding other family members there. Making friends with the family made it easier to explore what Facebook has to offer. When you boil it all down, it’s really nothing more than an advertisement server. They entertain the Internet public while getting the opportunity to serve that public ads that make them money. This isn’t much different than the strategy television networks have been subscribed: free entertainment as long as we can pitch some products to you in the meantime. “Here’s a word from our sponsors.”

Twitter is going to take some time to get used to. I’m still not sure how I’d want to use it. Besides announcing a random thought once in a while, I don’t have much need for it. I do like the ability of following others’ feeds so that they all collect on your Twitter home page. I follow Senator John McCain from Arizona, Tim Buckley of Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do. It’s entertaining and with this market you couldn’t ask for more.

I still can’t bring myself to go back to MySpace, though. It doesn’t appeal to me anymore. So, I’ll play around with these and see what I can make out of it all. If you’re at all interested, the links are located to the right and at the bottom of every page.

Not that I’m belittling the need for social interaction, we all need it, but my need wouldn’t even register on a collective measure of most social networking sites’ users. Over the years, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m unique and don’t require the presence of similar individuals to feel better about myself. That marks me as a loner and an introvert, and while others may be saddened by that, I’m perfectly fine with it. But I have recently found myself wanting to share with people and decided it was time to join the online community a bit more than I have been.

The most prominent evidence of that is the blog, but it only occupies a minute corner of the Net. I had a MySpace account but never used it for more than looking at band’s pictures. Facebook attracts too much attention, and along with Twitter, has shown a reluctance for improving privacy security. I have a Twitter account and was going to make an attempt at using it more until the report of an administrator using a simple plain text password along with the login process being prone to dictionary attacks.

For now, I’ve gone with last.fm which deals with tracking people’s music listening. As you listen to music on your computer, a client updates your last.fm profile with your listening choices. That data is gathered and shared with others. You get information about favorite artists and shown similar music you may be interested in. You can also keep track of other’s lists, or group’s lists, and listen to them as well.

It’ll serve me well during my foray into the social networking scene. Maybe I’ll see you there.

I am wondering…

If I deleted my account back at the end of January, why am I possibly still
receiving any kind of notification from MySpace to my “external
email”? And since I have no account at MySpace, how in the world would I
go about changing the Account Settings so that I no longer receive any more
notifications from MySpace aside from marking them all as spam with Yahoo’s
Spam Filter? Is there a problem with MySpace’s policy towards privacy in
regards to the emails of past members?

Truly, these are intriguing questions. Hopefully, someone with the correct
information can answer them.

Certainly these questions shouldn’t be too difficult to answer, especially for those at the other end of privacy@myspace.com. My questions at first fell on blind eyes as the automated responder that monitors that address sent back the following:

Hello,

The upload a video follow the instructions below:

*  After logging in, go to your “Home” page then click the “Add/Change Video” link.
*  Find the ‘Upload Videos’ link on the upper right side of the screen.
*  You’ll be able to select a title, tag, describe, etc. your selected video.
*  You’ll need to accept our Terms and Conditions to continue by checking the box ‘I agree to the MySpace Terms of Service’.  (You also have the option to review them as well)
*  The next screen will prompt you to locate your video.  You will now need to click on the ‘Browse’ button, choose the video file that you desire to add and click the ‘Upload’ button.
*  Please ensure that your chosen video is the proper format and is under 100 MB.  Now, the system will process your video (please be patient).   Also, note that if you are uploading inappropriate material your account will be deleted by MySpace.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe. www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

If you have any additional questions, please respond to this e-mail. Please do not alter the subject as it will be considered a new inquiry.

Thank you for contacting MySpace.com.

SURVEY FEEDBACK
Tell us how we’re doing. Copy and paste this link to into a new browser to let us know what you think:
[link removed] Please note, MySpace will NEVER ask you for your password as part of our survey feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion with us.

I removed the survey link along with A LOT OF FUCKING WHITE SPACE in order to present it here. Even in their email correspondence, their formatting looks terrible. But how any of that information was supposed to answer any of my questions is beyond me. I immediately replied, without altering the subject, by simply asking for a real human response and repeated my original inquiry. Today I get:

Hello,

The issue seems to be resolved now.  If this does not address your issue completely, please press “Reply” and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe. www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

Thank you,
MySpace.com
—————

Survey Feedback

Tell us how we’re doing. Click here to let us know what you think! Please note, MySpace will NEVER ask you for your password as part of our survey feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion with us.

Yes, more white space was removed. Here we have the general form letter. I’m sure there were plenty of staff meetings involved with the creation of this boiled down reply. Take notice that there was no specific mention of any problem being resolved, just that it was. Now I have to hold on to this email for a possible future reply in case the issue has been “resolved” as they non-explicitly promised.

And see how they gave me the address to their Help blog? Updates everyday!!! You got to love a company that is so in tuned with their customer base. I’m betting I get a follow-up email in case I didn’t see those links for the survey feedback. Thank-you Simon Owen for finally giving me the motivation to ditch that company.

Now, you’re probably asking why I quoted that last word. Call me a cynic. Call me skeptical. But from what I’ve seen in my lifetime is that no-one’s account is ever, completely, deleted. Sure, my account was not accessible by any means at my disposal. But was my account truly deleted? Well, my answer came today.

The MySpace.com June/July 2008 Newsletter arrived in my inbox today to the delight of no-one at that email address. It was complete with announcements of new features such as MySpace Karaoke, MySpace Polls, MySpace Apps, and MySpace Latino… oh my! And it would not have been MySpace official without everyone’s best friend, Tom, starting off the newsletter.

From Featured Artist, to Featured Comedian, to Featured Videos, I was never so bored with a newsletter packed with so much excitement as I was with this one. Probably so much so because supposedly my account was deleted back at the end of January. Apparently, MySpace never bothered to mention that in some rare cases, my email would be retained for future use through shameless self-promotion in order to lure me back. Nice.

MySpace does offer an opt-out. They go into great detail over it at the bottom of the newsletter:

At MySpace we care about your privacy. We have sent you this notification to facilitate your use as a member of the MySpace.com service. If you don’t want to receive emails like this to your external email account in the future, change your Account Settings to “Do not send me notification emails.” Click here to change your Account Settings. You can also contact us with any questions or concerns regarding your privacy at: privacy@myspace.com MySpace, Inc. 8391 Beverly Blvd. #349 Los Angeles, CA 90048 USA © 2003-2008 MySpace.com. All Rights Reserved.

However, considering that I am not a member of the MySpace.com service, because I have no account to go to in order to change the notification emails setting, I guess my only hope is to contact them at the “privacy” address. I’ll be sending them a quaint reply. Stay tuned for any future developments.

The day is here, yes indeed. International Delete Your MySpace Account. I commented a few days ago about Simon Owen of Bloggasm trying to organize a mass deletion at MySpace and today is the target date. And it’s gaining a bit of national exposure from The Washington Post to a Channel 9 News Now segment. Along with the rest of us trying to spread the word, there should be plenty of ex-MySpace users after today enjoying life without the umbilical cord feeding them useless spam friend requests, other user’s ridiculously formatted pages, and the blaring music coming from a media player hidden somewhere on a nine mile page.

MySpace isn’t necessarily evil, but the site has grown to such a capacity that it seems unmanageable in the terms of moderation to a point where it’s no longer a phenomenon but a failure. Maybe if we can convince enough to leave, the administrators will take notice and find a way to fix the issues.

Simon Owen gives a detailed list of instructions on how to successfully complete the deletion of your account in five (well six) easy steps. After 48 hours of submitting your request to delete your account, your profile should be removed.

My opinion is that there won’t necessarily be a huge exodus today as much as there will be a general fallout over the course of a week or two. If we can keep pushing the issue and convincing users that MySpace isn’t needed, we can keep the ball rolling and the avalanche to continue. In the spirit of the day, I have just deleted my own. We’ll see if it disappears in 48 hours.

Simon Owen of Bloggasm has proposed that we all delete our MySpace accounts on January 30th. As a MySpace account holder, albeit much unused, I can sympathize with many of Simon’s points. He lists 10 reasons that pretty much hit home for most of us who dread visiting MySpace.

My only reason for having a MySpace account to begin with is to get pictures of bands and musicians to go along with my music. It is a requirement to have an account to see other details such as pictures or videos, which seems odd considering everyone seems to already be within my extended network. To this day I have no idea what the extended network is or how it benefits me.

I may join up with Simon and finally get rid of it. I may never have to see another useless email from them. My only fear will be that the frequent request emails I now receive will be replaced by pleas to return once the account is deleted. Maybe we’ll see some PSAs from Tom.