Blog Platform Review – Myspace

Myspace is more of a social networking platform than a blog platform; while it does include options to make blog posts, the blog isn’t really front and center when someone browses your profile; it’s more of a line item, one more thing about you that’s shared with friends or with the public at large.

Nevertheless, given the sheer number of people who’ve signed up into Myspace (141 million, according to the “My Network” statistics on signing up), there’re potentially millions of blogs on Myspace. And for a number of casual bloggers, Myspace is likely to be their only “blog”.

Signing up

Myspace has a sign up process that’s more elaborate than the others we tested till now; you need to provide a lot more personal information to get in. While you can skip some parts like the photo upload, basic details including name, location, age and sex are mandatory. This contrasts with Blogger or Wordpress where all you need is an email id; but fits in with the personal profiling and social networking intent that drives Myspace. The test blog we set is at http://www.myspace.com/2cworth.

Posting and Customization

The basic blog menu is fairly simple; options to post, view the blog, or customize it.

Creating a post is done through a rich text editor; additional options to keep the post private, allow comments, and show your mood. Customization of the blog itself is limited to changing colors and fonts.

However, there’s another option to customize – through layouts. Many external resources offer layout generators of different types; using these, customizing the look and feel of your profile becomes fairly easy. You can also add pictures, icons and other elements to make your profile stand out.

Social features

Commenting and trackbacks – the two key features that define discussion for blogs – are rather rudimentary for Myspace.

Browsing through the network, there were quite a number of profiles without any blog posts; and the blogs we found tended to have comments turned off. With no spam control tools, and a need to manually delete any spam comments, it’s easier for the casual blogger to avoid comments totally. Trackbacks too don’t seem to be supported – again, a reflection of Myspace’s personal networking focus as opposed to blog focus.

Where Myspace excels in social networking is in searching by demographics; finding people who live in the same area as you, or by age / sex / interest in relationships is a lot easier. But you can’t search by interest, or by topic; Myspace apparently believes that these aren’t important. And perhaps, for their users, it isn’t important.

The other area Myspace excels, is in integrating other communication modes; getting Myspace through your mobile phone, adding your instant messenger, or importing your web email addressbook show up on your dashboard, as soon as you login. For people who are looking to simply their communication options, this is very helpful.

Other features

Myspace has a few other features that caught the eye – forums for discussion, bulletins where you can make announcements to all friends, and a classified ads section that’s reminiscent of Craigslist.

All these interactive features provide a completeness in the experience; while it has nothing to do with blogging, the richness of the experience even within minutes explains why Myspace has been growing membership by leaps and bounds.

At the same time, the rampant growth has also brought spam to Myspace; the ease with which anyone can sign up and create a false profile together with the ease of communicating and building a network, makes it attractive for some who wish to mask their identities for any reason. One joke has it that the latest toy is a Myspace Barbie - an obese 50 year old male masquerading as a blonde 20-something.

Conclusion

As a blog platform, Myspace is nothing to write home about; it just has rudimentary blogging features, only adequate enough to qualify as a blog platform.

The other parts of Myspace – the social networking tools, groups, forums, messaging, etc. – plus the music / videos / bands really define what Myspace is all about. And by integrating a blog, classifieds, and other tools for browsing and searching, Myspace allows you to get a place on the web that’s all about you.

With that intent, the blog serves the intended purpose: for you to quickly add your thoughts and ideas, and share these with a larger group in the context of who you are. Which is probably adequate for a casual blogger.