From Digg :Inspired by Kevin Rose’s $200 investment, and its success, I ask this: Can the collaborative social news phenomenon Digg.com inspire the rapid development of a MySpace-like social network created, collaboratively, by Digg users (designers, programmers, beta testers), using open source web infrastructure?
My answer : Why the hell not?
But to create something that will challenge Myspace will be something abit special. MySpace is trying do what Microsoft does; be everything to everybody, but in MySpace’s case it seems to be a working formula.
What exactly is wrong with MySpace?
As much as MySpace is trying to be everything to everybody its still not being the be all and end all in web 2.0 to me and many others, I still don’t have a MySpace and will probably never get one.
I aren’t denying that MySpace can be a powerful tool but it is a melting pot for extremes, People with 3000+ friends (its physically impossible without the web to have a group of friends that big the maximum is about 100 for an average person) and then theres all the bad press it gets because of children being exploited through the network. If they’d have thought of that when they started out they could have put some policies even some code to help prevent it.
Then there is the fact the whole site is just messy, theres ads all the place and theres little in the way of easily accesible content. Why do all these so called “web2.0” sites, use very “web 1” ads, subtle ads win the day. Apart from the ads mucking up the design they just are irrelevant and people are so used to them they are ignored so why even bother putting them in? find another way to make money.
Keep It Simple Stupid ~ KISS
Why is it so complicated to find what you want on myspace apart from the ads, and why do they feel the need to replicate links and content images all over, A simple Menu system, maybe with a bit of AJAX magic would make it so much more bearable. Also the music player on peoples profile gets on my nerves why does it insist on playing on load, let the user on the end to decide.
Whilst I think that personalizing web-pages is good, personalizing MySpace pages is all wrong, MySpace should give the ability to this within there system that way they can keep everything cohesive and understandable no matter what page your on.
So That’s What I Think
I tried to be objective and it looks as if a manage it a bit but not enough. It may seem like I am just taking MySpace simply because I don’t like it, but it’s not that at all I think MySpace is successful at what it does and should inspire people to see what they can do with an idea and some coding knowledge, but as with all thing I seriously think that it can be done a lot better, and the real question is why can’t we do it better and be creative with it too.