10 ways MySpace can (and needs to) improve

by Ted Wallingford Sep 26th 2007

MySpace has fulfilled a lot of its original vision. It enables people with absolutely no web skills to create a home page. Sure, sometimes these home pages are downright ugly, but it's a start for those, who like our 60-year-old moms, wouldn't otherwise have an ice cube's chance in Hades of making a home page.

In some ways, MySpace has become what .Mac should have. .Mac's intentions were to foster social interaction by means of media shared between friends--basically what MySpace does. Yet MySpace is free and has probably five hundred times more users than .Mac. So Tom and gang are obviously doing something right.

Yet most MySpace users who've been on the service any length of time will bellyache about the nuances of their chosen social networking site. Here are 10 ways MySpace can assure their future as a viable outlet for media sharing and socializing:

1. Eliminate the spam problem by requiring captcha entries on all profiles with more than 200 friends. This will cut down on comment spam significantly.

2. Allow users to specify whether or not they want to hear a profile song when they visit somebody else's profile.

3. Instead of relying upon ridiculous, ad-laiden HTML code blocks for posting embedded media, make it easier for users to embed pictures and videos with some snazzy Ajax user interface. Drag and drop, place em where ya want em, resize em, etc.

4. Monitor requests for tech support and respond quickly.

5. Solve the bandwidth problems that plague the media servers at MySpace HQ. Sometimes page load times are unacceptable and users will be subject to more ad exposures if the page loads quickly.

6. Allow a single e-mail address to be linked to multiple MySpace accounts. Nuff said.

7. Fix the broken code in the 'Search my friends' feature. Searching your own friends should be easy, yet zip code searches and other criteria have been broken literally for years.

8. Allow simple Yes/No confirmation requests to occur in an Ajax pop, not in an entirely separate page load (a la Facebook).

9. Allow bands to post more than 4 songs. The arbitrary limit doesn't make sense to independents, who would just as quickly have people listening to all of their songs rather than only 4 of them, regardless of if the musician gets paid. Being an indy isn't about getting paid anyway.

10. Allow friends to mass-comment their own friends. This alone would cut down on the use of illegitimate add-ons and save users a lot of time.

There you have it. We could've made this list three times longer, but those are the main points we're concerned with. With a little help from good old Tom and his band of ColdFusion developers, maybe MySpace won't get swept under the rug by Facebook after all.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nathan said 1:25PM on 9-26-2007

"2. Allow users to specify whether or not they want to hear a profile song when they visit somebody else's profile."

They have this feature but its been broken for well over 4 months now. I even emailed tech support about it and got "We're working on it ;)".. 4 months later...

"10. Allow friends to mass-comment their own friends. This alone would cut down on the use of illegitimate add-ons and save users a lot of time."

It'll never happen. Every time you visit someones page they show an ad and make money. Now imagine instead of going to everyones page and viewing all those ads, you just mass comment and dont view any at all. No more money.

Shibathedog said 1:43PM on 9-26-2007

you have a good point on number 10

keeves said 3:06PM on 9-26-2007

nah, i disagree completely with number 10. I'd prefer if myspace prevented the same message being sent to everyone so that messages were always personal and written fro the person their sent to like facebook.

PS_4 said 5:03PM on 9-26-2007

Mass messaging = ability to send more messages, and faster than before.

More messages = more ppl reading them.

More people reading more messages = these people viewing more ads

More ads viewed = more money.

;)

xaos said 5:47PM on 9-26-2007

7."zip code searches and other criteria have been broken literally for years"

bzzt, wrong. Zip code search works quite well, and has never been broken as far as I can tell. Just ask all the chicks Ive banged.

Ted Wallingford said 6:13PM on 9-26-2007

I agree that allowing users to mass comment will result in more ad impressions being delivered than insisting that they send each comment individually. Which is more likely--getting a single user to do something 200 times or getting 200 users to do something once?

syahid ali said 4:22AM on 10-05-2007

seconded point no 1 and 2. and please have some control on themes. i've experienced some myspace themes that took too long to load thus crashing my browser.

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