I now fully regret my earlier ambivalence about MySpace. As it turns out, the site is only lame when you have 600 or 700 friends. Having crossed the magic threshold of 1,000 MySpace pals, I truly understand what all the fuss is about.
The difference is MySpace Advanced, and you can only access it when you have more than 1,000 friends. It’s beta, and I guess I clicked on some sort of non-disclosure button when I accepted. But it’s too great a secret to keep to myself.
Here are just some of the improvements you get with MySpace Advanced:
Full CSS styling. No longer do you have to hide formatting in weird text boxes.
AJAX-y goodness. You can delete rogue comments in-place, or drag-and-drop elements on the page.
HTML tag destroyers. Not only can you turn off HTML graphics in comments, you can automatically delete any comment that tries to use them.
Lameness filters. Sick of people leaving ASCII graphics as comments? Just click the checkbox and they’re history.
Smarter ads. Even though it says “gay” in your “orientation” field, the system knows you might be interested in something other than a shirtless guy for Gay.com.
Education screening. The system parses every message, comment and profile blurb a user writes, generating an estimated education level for the user. I have my threshold set to “College Grad,” which effectively silences the stupid people.1
The new version is terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.
Even with a thousand so-called friends, the system is just as lame and frustrating as it was when it was just me and Tom.2 So, this is my way of saying goodbye to MySpace in all its craptastic-ness. See ya. Wouldn’t want to be ya.
