I still use Myspace. There- I said it. Granted, I don't use it much, but I do still go there and check messages and friend requests. The once dominant social site has seen something of an interest shift in its purpose of late. As more and more people turn their back on it in favour of Twitter and Facebook, its social capabilities have become something of a relic of an earlier internet. However, its use as a resource for bands, films and even books has seen an increase.
While it's seen as anathema to still be using your Myspace account for anything social, it's very much the done thing to visit a band's page to hear the new material and check out tour dates. Heck, many musicians have eschewed a real site altogether and direct their domain names directly to a Myspace page. it's a great resource for artists, but the whole social side to it has all but vanished.
Sure, they have tried to make it a bit like Facebook and a bit like Twitter and a bit like everything else, but that's just how the internet goes- if something proves it works, then everyone else will try and incorporate that into their own thing. Why do I still use this dinosaur of a bygone era of the net? Because as a writer and as someone with an interest in keeping myself active on all fronts, it is very useful indeed.
There are a still a few people I swap messages with on there, but 95% of my social stuff online is done through Facebook, Livejournal and Twitter. Myspace has become something altogether different from when it started out now- it's more like a magazine than a place to socialize now. The Myspace servers are littered with endless abandoned accounts, inactive photobucket account images as their backgrounds, blogs that haven't been updated in eons and 'last login' dates that are growing ever older.
It's a weird place to be now, but I have fond memories of what it once was. I wonder what it will become... if anything. Perhaps it will become a relic like Geocities did, or maybe it will find its feet again as something altogether new? Online, pretty much anything can happen. Then again, I doubt much will happen until Tom finally gets a new user picture...
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