“Social network” sites became the rage a couple years ago. They arose out of nowhere and demanded that I list all my friends. Egads. I didn’t get it. (But I’m often wrong).
These sites are still around and we’ve named a whole group of people after one of them. Worse yet, I still don’t get it, so the “MySpace generation” has me feeling mighty old at 26.
Adam’s 3 rules for social websites
You can trust these rules, because it’s too late for hype.
- Give me a benefit, outside of the social aspect, to use your site
- Loosen the constraints
- Know thy audience
MySpace has done a very good job with #3. It’s almost as if, while brainstorming, they wrote “Not Adam DuVander” as their model user. So, MySpace can take my comments with a grain of salt, because I’m obviously not hip to their jig.
However, I think MySpace could work on numbers 1 and 2. From what I’ve seen (and heard from the happenin’ folks at NPR), the social aspect is all there is on MySpace. And sending me an email to say there’s an email waiiting for me is overkill. It’s the opposite of loose constraints.
And if the MySpace generation were free to make up their own new uses of the site, it could grow with them. Otherwise, they’ll be bored with it by junior year.
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Sounds like you’re ahead of me, I don’t even have a MySpace account and still can’t see why I need one. One look at just about any page on there will send me screaming. And the coding…*shivers*
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
God, you’re *old*!!!
February 22nd, 2006 at 4:29 pm
It’s the end of an era! Sniff.