Experientialism in safe mode
I've blogged about myspace. I've read other blogs about myspace. But the best way to learn about myspace is to join it. So I did.
Some observations:
- I noticed one minor thing in the design of the sign-up process. Initially I thought it was a bug, but upon reflection I realized that it was a good feature. As you know, myspace discourages very young folks from signing up for their services. The easiest way to check someone who says they're a certain age is to ask the person for his/her birthdate. Someone may know that he/she is (or is supposed to be) 21, but do they necessarily know that this means that they were born in 1984? So myspace, rather than asking your age, asks your birthdate. And as part of this, they ask you to enter the year. And they'll let you enter any year, even an invalid year. For example, it is possible to enter a birthdate in the year 2006. I didn't try to do this to see what would happen, but it is possible, and is probably a good guard against underage imposters.
- myspace is a networking service first and foremost, and as such they obviously want to encourage people to network. So, right off the bat, they ask you to enter your employers, your schools, etc., etc., etc. For the record, they don't post the warning about revealing information before you start entering this stuff (not that I did, other than noting my music preferences).
Incidentally, I've tried the myspace blog feature. It has some nice features, including some canned categorization that I haven't really tried out yet.
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