So, I got this message on Facebook the other day from a friend of mine in high school.  We were on the same baseball team, had some of the same classes.  You know.  Normal stuff.  Last I heard he went to the military, but literally hadn’t spoken to him in over ten years.  Ten years.

So I get this message from him that was super nice and short.  Sort of a “Hey man, heard you were married and might have some kids.  What have you been up to?” kind of message…. In the last ten years?!?

Hmmm.  Well, I’ve been up to a lot in the last ten years, and so have you.  It’d be awesome to sit down over a meal or two and chat about our wives, kids, careers, and, you know, the last ten years.

I don’t know.  Maybe that just throw me off and not other people, but how on earth to I respond to the last ten years of my life in a Facebook message?  Do people really connect this way?

But my weirded-out-ness doesn’t stop with just connecting with people I haven’t talked to in ten years.  Another part that weirds me out about it is when people throw up a status update pouring their heart out for the world to see.  Their depression, their divorce, their issues with their kids, their issues with their parents… on Facebook.  Really?

I guess what it all comes down to is it feels like “connecting” on something like Facebook or Twitter seems like it might be disconnecting us from actual relationships.  And I’m sure there’s someone else who has written about this far more eloquent that I have.  Heck, they probably even have a list of ten things do to keep this from happening or something.  But that’s what’s weirding me out today.

What do we think?

So, according to this article Facebook has finally dethroned MySpace.  But we all knew that was going to happen right? Now here’s the funny thing to me.  The only two Social Networking sites that are shrinking are MySpace and AOL Community.  Hmmm.  MySpace and something I’ve never heard of.  Now, I’m not saying that MySpace is going away forever.  I mean, sure, they have millions of dollars and researching and all that, so I’m sure they will be around for a while, but it’s interesting that it’s actually shrinking.  Going down.  Loosing ground.  I love it.

As someone who has never liked the cheap, trashy, Windows feel of MySpace I’m glad to see that there might be a time soon where people don’t ask me if having a MySpace can replace them having a ‘real’ website.  In fact, according to that same article, the only thing that MySpace is “winning” at is showing more ads.  Makes you really want to go there doesn’t it?  I’m excited to see what MySpace pulls out to actually compete with the competition, but really I’m excited to begin to have to think less and less about it.

Now, I know what most of your answers are going to be, but is there anyone out there still using MySpace?  Anyone who goes to it daily and says hi to all of your indie hip-hop artist and amateur porn star “friends”?  I don’t.

+

Well, I did it. I signed up on several of the world wide web social networking systems against my better judgement. You might be asking, why. Why did Brody sign up on all of those world wide web social networking systems?

Well I can tell you why. I did it so I could use them to point people here. I did it so I could learn how to use them to point people here. And I did it because I need to know how to use that stuff. So there you have it folks. Yes, I have a MySpace. No, there is nothing on it. Yes, I have a Facebook. No, there is nothing on it. Yes I have a Virb. You guessed it… nothing on it. I also have a Twitter account, that I have used a couple times, but, no there’s not much there. Aren’t you impressed?

So now comes the fun part of digging through all the weird code and verifications to make sure I know how to work these things. After all, everyone has them right? Now I do to.

Seriously, what really spurred this on was the announcement of this, and my quest to know more about the different things concerning artists and online presence. Who knows maybe someday we can all work together as a big happy world wide web social networking family.

So we got pretty much a lot of the same answers on the first post, but there were a few good points, pointed out by some folks. Now, first I would like to point out that I am not suggesting that we throw out Myspace all together. From a marketing end that would be stupid. I realize that it’s something that has to exist, but I still hold to what I say in that an artists Myspace page needs to point to something that doesn’t suck. We all (mostly) agree that Myspace sucks, but I think all of us see the usefulness of it.

If we all agree that it sucks, but has to be there, why not have that point to something that doesn’t suck. Shaun made some great points in the comment section about spreading yourself out there enough that no matter what avenue people are on there is a way to find you. That’s an obvious good call. Tim also made some good points about the reach of Myspace over anything else out there. But again, why spend the time, where there could be a giant button that directs the reader to something more personal and that, again, doesn’t suck?

Dale over at IdeaDen is neck deep in artists online presence and rebutted with this post, which also states that while Myspace sucks, it also may “rule”. Dale writes:

It allows people to modify….er eh…destroy their profiles and make their site look more like a drunken programmers product after a Mountain Dew shortage. Despite all of its shortcomings, one thing remains true…if you want to find out about music and connect to the bazzzillllions of people looking for it…then Myspace is king.

Well written and true. As sad as that is. I think my big question is, What Next? What happens when Facebook is the “kind of sucks, kind of rules” thing and we are on to bigger and better? How many artists are leaving behind too many un-updated sites that are causing more confusion for their career than it is helping it? Do they need to hire someone full-time simply to make sure all of these social networking things are consistent? Or do all of these places simply point to one consistent place, and that being the “.com”?

Just thoughts. Thanks for all the input. What do you guys think?