Devil’s Advocate: Does Myspace Suck?

The only people Myspace benefits are artists and small, independent novelty vendors. It isn’t the competition that is keeping Myspace down – it is the fact that people don’t go to Myspace looking to network for their home security business.  Myspace have never been a great place to kick-start your advertising unless your target audience includes casual browsers looking for trendy junk or independent music.  Facebook?  Well, it is more formal than Myspace, but it is pretty much a tool to MAINTAIN contacts rather than MAKE contacts.

I am a huge advocate of sites like LinkedIn.  Though they may also be classified in the same group, those sites provide searchable information.  99% of the people searching on Facebook are looking for names or schools, while (this is a total guesstimation) maybe 75% of the people are only looking for names on LinkedIn (while the rest look for specific fields or experience).

My experience with this type of stuff has shown that social networking sites are only a small step of mastering online networking.  One must also comment on forums, blogs, and actually email people.  No one thinks of email as social networking.  However, if you personally email someone (maybe they run a website that is part of your target market), you are instantly initiating a conversation.

So my final thoughts on Myspace: blah.  The search feature is clunky, people do piss-poor design jobs with their page (making it unusable), and it should be left to independent artists and novelties, in terms of networking.