(My)Space Cowboy

I've been hangin' around the IT Corral fer nigh on to thirty years, pardner, an' I've seen some pretty darn dumb ideas come down the Ol' Checksum Trail. You prob'ly even remember some of 'em, even if y'are jes' a whippersnapper:

• Microsoft's "Bob" operatin' system (and they weren't talkin' J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, neither)
• Apple's Newton ('nuff said)
• IBM's OS/2 "Warp" (not enough Trekkies to keep that one afloat, I reckon)
• Pointcast, Backweb and all them other "information push" and "webcasting" technologies that were a-gonna to ree-vo-lutionize content delivery a while back
• Internet-enabled ever'thin' (what kinda durn fool wants ta surf the web from a refrigerator?)

Dead, ever' one of 'em, and planted up thar on Reboot Hill. Nights, some of the real old-timers - them UNIX guys with the suspenders and the beards, y'know - they claim they can see their ghosts a-walkin' 'round up thar, tryin' to sell ya stock options. Freeze the blood in yer veins, by cracky!

OK, that's enough of channeling old Gunsmoke re-runs, but you get the picture. In technology, as in any other field of human endeavor, the mediocre or outright stinky ideas always out-number the real winners. My nominee for the latest bad idea: social networking web sites in general and myspace.com in particular.

You've probably heard about myspace.com by now, although what you've heard probably depends on whether you're getting your information from technology news outlets like ZDNet or InformationWeek vs. mainstream media sources or propaganda services like Faux (a.k.a. Fox) News. To hear the latter two tell it, myspace is a hotbed of sexual perverts, child molesters and, for all I know, Yetis and Martians. To most of the Propeller Beanie crowd, on the other hand, it appears to be the Next Big Thing.

You know - like information push.

It's not that the idea of the Internet as a social network is inherently bad. Back before there was even a single web site, like-minded folks exchanged information and opinions and formed various types of personal relationships via e-mail and usenet newsgroups. Social networking sites have just made it easier to do so and therefore more accessible to a wider range of people.

"Aye, there's the rub."

Because the easier it becomes to create something - like, say, a web site on myspace.com - the more likely you are to have incompetent people creating it. Myspace has taken this to its logical extreme, allowing members to stick pretty much anything they want on their pages in any way they want, resulting in some of the worst web sites since the early days of Microsoft FrontPage.

I experienced this on a personal level this past weekend when, in a fit of unaccustomed leisure time, I decided to visit the myspace page of a close friend. She had recently gone through a rather nasty relationship break-up and I was curious to see how she was doing. We hadn't talked in a while and her insane work schedule make phone conversations highly unlikely.

We may have to have that phone call yet, though, since I never was able to locate her page - it seems she's using a nom de net that I didn't know about. I did, however, slog through a number of other myspace pages in the process and, to paraphrase the late Warren Zevon, they ain't that pretty at all. Most were so chaotic and so filled with junk media that they were effectively useless. Huge image files there were in abundance, along with automatic slide shows and, that most obnoxious of all features, music that began playing as soon as the page loaded. I decided that the game was not worth the virtual candle and hit the "close" box.

And let 's not even start on the abusive pop-up and pop-under ad boxes!

Besides, even with a less-cluttered interface, fewer ads, and no spyware cookies, a social networking web site is no substitute for - well - social networking. In person.

Jes' lak in the ol' days, by cracky!