MySpace for Libraries
I've never liked MySpace--I didn't ever get into the online social networking thing until Facebook came along. I've looked at people's profiles in MySpace, and I began one for myself that has languished with no content in it for a very long time. Facebook required much less initial time investment. Your profile could be up and running right away, which definitely made sense to me. MySpace also irritated me in its cluttered nature, which makes pages difficult to navigate and makes them take an indefinite time to load. All that said, it can be good if the right person is using it, as evidenced by the library MySpace pages we looked at. Its versatility, which really is the cause of many of my complaints, also can make it the ideal web page for a library looking to "be where its users are."
Being used to Facebook, I had no idea how long a process it is to put up a decent MySpace page, but here it is: myspace.com/dclibrary. It took far longer than I anticipated because I had to find code for everything I wanted to do to the page. Also, it seems to me that MySpace has been around so long that people assume that everyone knows how to use it. I couldn't figure out where to paste the background and layout changing code, and I figured I'd look on the internet for it. It would have been smarter to just start pasting it places, because it took surprisingly long to find that information on the internet, and it was not in the FAQ pages for MySpace. It also took me a while to figure out how to get back to the edit page once I'd left it. From the MySpace page, I had to click into "Home" and then to "Edit." It seems counterintuitive to have to click through a separate page to edit my profile. Since I was already logged in, why couldn't my page have an "Edit" link in the menu bar?
All in all, I think I'll stick to Facebook for my personal profile for now--its much more low maintenance. For a library page, perhaps MySpace is a better option, as its appearance is customizable and can be made to fit the library's overall "look." However, I think the new profile editor may completely change my perception of MySpace, and even my use level. I'm actually kind of surprised that it's taken MySpace this long to come up with an editor like that. I guess it's been a matter of "why mess with something that's working?"
