In defence of MySpace (and other “Worst Web sites”)
PCWorld Author Dan Tynan, starts off his “25 Worst Website” list, with what I imagine he thinks is an insightful comment: “When it comes to the Web, hindsight is more like X-ray vision”. I’m not sure if Dan is ignorant, elitist or just suffering from radiation poisoning from over-exposure to X-ray vision, but this article suffers from a severe disconnect from how the real world views and uses the internet.
The technical world is quickly heading into another bubble, call it web2.0 if you like. Articles like these show that we haven’t learned our lessons. The question that I have to ask, is after the boom bursts, who will be left standing, MySpace or YouTube?
The rest is a rant.
Goldenpalace.com
The author’s gripe has to do with their incessant advertising, I personally thought that buying the “Virgin Mary Sandwich” was a great marketing move. They are making untold millions (billions?) of dollars, have hundreds of thousands over users, so I don’t see how in any stretch of your imagination can this classify as a worst website.
Hotmail is the king of free email, sure it’s an old and slightly decrepit king, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it was the first free email service, and paved the way for the truly brilliant free email systems that we have now. Sure stupid things were done (does everyone remember the two-step username-password issue?) but hotmail was treading on virgin territory, and this is to be expected.
Beanz.com, Flooz.com, Boo.com
What can you say about dot bombs? It was over hyped and just didn’t work out, the irony is that this list could very easily have included Paypal.com, Amazon.com and e-gold.com they all had similar business models, and similar websites. The management/marketing/timing is what caused their notoriety, not the website.
What’s the deal with adding these sites in with sites like goldenpalace.com anyway? Whether you spend a ton of money and advertising and bomb, or spend a ton of money on advertising and make millions you still make the list of worst sites?
Windows Update
This is just whiny, and just shows an anti-microsoft bias. When you arrive at the Windows Update site, you walk through a couple of steps which scan your computer and presents available updates and allows you to view and install each independantly. It’s IE only because it uses an ActiveX control to install the software. I personally think that this is one of the nicer parts of windows, and if you don’t like it you can always do the automatic updates.
At this point the author seems to grab a bunch of sites out of nowhere, from some ugly page (last updated in 2002) to a couple more dot bombs (pets.com and mylackey.com) to a site that doesn’t even resolve anymore (Pixelon.com), and finally Bonzaibuddy, which isn’t even a site but a piece of spyware. What is this guy smoking?
Now we find ourselves down to the last 5. I’ll agree that AllAdvantage.com and CyberRebate.com were a stupid ideas, CDUniverse.com wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last company who gets their credit card database stolen. Cartoonnetwok.com is one of millions of typosquatting examples.
And finally the big kahuna.
MySpace.com
The feeling that I have after reading this article, is that they pulled 24 randomly crappy sites as a platform to rag on MySpace. Take the authors reasoning for selecting Myspace as the worst Web site (whatever that is supposed to mean) and substitute the words Myspace with Internet and it reads like some geriatric congressman telling congress that the internet is just a bunch of pedophiles and bad for the morality of this great nation.
MySpace is a true example of the evolution of the internet. A platform was created which people could display information about themselves. The original platform was intended for textual output, but as people discovered that they could modify the look of their profile pages through these weird “codes” written in something called “html and css” myspace took on a life of its own.
Sure, there are a lot of VERY ugly pages on MySpace, but the whole point is to let people do what they want with their profile. Who am I to tell you that you can’t create an fugly profile page? If you’re such a geek and still have to visit these myspace pages, just specify your own stylesheets in firefox and turn off flash. Problem solved.
When criticizing Myspace, what people don’t see is the fantastic opportunities that MySpace presents to people like independent musicians. Here is a platform where a musician can gather all their fans, keep in touch with them through bulletins, upload music, and with one click of a button let their fans play their music on their profile pages.
Like the internet itself, MySpace is a weird and wonderful thing. Learn to live with it and the people who create it, oh yes, and add me as a friend!
September 17th, 2006 at 1:47 am
don’t fall for these kinds of link-bait posts that these people put up. Just ignore them and they will go away. I wish people would just stop ragging on myspace. Total waste of typing. Yes its popular, yes it has alot of ugly stuff.
If that was the basis for ranting about a web site, someone should just start ranting about the web. Or at least a site like bikerfox.com that guy needs to just go away.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:16 am
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