Layout:
Oh my, this is a mess. You need a lot of intuition to handle this baby. Every page is packed with blocks of text, mostly adds, that makes it hard to use. It is just to spammy. When it comes to userpages the base layout is so foul it seems to give even the best web site designer problems, I have seen a lot of MySpace pages and about 5 of them have been decent, not a single one would have been acceptable as a real site. The idea with block of text or links or adds filling every square inch of a site just doesn’t cut it.
Feel:
Even though it looks like shit and the first impression is that every person using myspace must be blind it feels real in a way other sites don’t. Maybe it’s just the massive amount of user but I can think of a few other reasons more.
It is so easy to use, in a way, every housewife, pensionist and schoolkid can get an instant website. If you don’t know anything about css it’ll look like myspace-standard-ugly but it’s still an instant site.
You can see what people like, everyone is parading their favourite artist and best friends around on their sites. Even if you’ve never met this guy you know that he is a Ladytron fan and likes to hang out with Mike with the moustache.
Even important people use it, Sean Combs does it, David Spade too, everyone. Or at least some guy does it in their name, but it still feels important.
Useful?
A few bands have made a break on MySpace but that seems rather impossible now, it as turned out to be mostly bands spamming each other about gigs, new songs or different tools for spamming bands on myspace.
For the standard user it might be fun to be on the friendslist of a band you like or get a comment from a good looking girl but when if we are going to be truthful: It doesn’t mean anything, a MySpace friend just means someone you can spam and all good looking girls on myspace are guys trying to sell you stuff.
Ok you can of course use it to keep in contact with your real friends all over the world but come on, a blog or an instant messenger will do that better.
