Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of heading out to the Refresh Dallas panel, where Brian Oberkirch, Blake Burris, John Keeler, and Jake McKee spoke at length on social media, in the past, present, and future. Understandably, the topic of MySpace was a recurring one during the discussion, and also understandably, the sense of frustration at ‘not getting it’ was equally evident. In the rational parts of my brain, I rank in that same incredulous number, throwing up my hands in frustration in the sheer badness of form and function that MySpace has overcome to succeed. So, I thought I would take a stab at helping everyone understand it all. No, not it’s success, but our reaction to it.

“Welcome to the Web 2.0″, they say. You know who they are. EVERYONE. They throw up a list of sites that you’ve undoubtedly heard of and read about and used a thousand times. 43Things, Basecamp, Upcoming, Flickr, YouTube, digg, Google Everything, MySpace, the list goes on and on and…wait. I think I threw you a curve there. While MySpace is often touted as the new-new thing, it’s not Web 2.0. While we have to sit and watched the uninformed utter “MySpace” and “Web 2.0″ in the same breath, relax, because they have it all wrong.

MySpace isn’t Web 2.0. It has a clunky and cluttered interface. It has constant page submits and reloads. The data is nearly impossible to find without exacting detail, and cannot be related once you’ve found it. It lacks APIs to extend MySpace, or new ways to use the data that MySpace houses. Your ‘community’ options are limited to a group of friends, a list over which you have some very limited control, and the new ‘groups’ feature, which feels tacked on at this point. Absent are dynamic data refreshes, clean interfaces, data control, the ability to establish relationships and move fluidly from one data point to another. MySpace, for all the freedom it’s users have to uglify their home pages, is a rigid tyrant, forcing you into routines that the successful Web 2.0 application consider anathema. Perhaps its only saving grace was its open registration, which allowed users to flood the network without having to be ‘invited’ by another user. MySpace is successful despite that fact that it is merely Livejournal with more wallspace to clutter.

As a designer, it’s important to understand that MySpace is NOT the new web. It’s the old web leaving too slowly. As a developer, you have to remember that MySpace is NOT a new-new thing. It’s a new-old thing, a code and feature dinosaur yearning for some real Web 2.0 DNA. It’s safe for us to raise our hackles a little when MySpace is compared to the amazing work being done on the web today.

But don’t pat yourself on the back for too long. Because, for all it’s mistakes and flaws and hideous flashing user pages, MySpace is the most succesful social site on the web. While I’m not going to do a detailed breakdown of the success of MySpace, there are some things we can comment on immediately that have contributed.

1. MySpace is Open. Anyone can register and have a MySpace account. When you’re looking to create your own super social media project, try to avoid closed, invitation only systems for too long. Even Facebook, which isn’t 100% ‘open’, has a low barrier of entry for advertising’s most coveted user base.
2. MySpace is configurable. Everyone knows that you can make your MySpace page as ugly as you would like. And in some cases, uglier. In fact, there is almost no limit to how convoluted, flashy, spinny, loud, and downright..well, ugly, you can make your MySpace homepage. Now, it stands to reason that most people don’t WANT an ugly homepage. What they want is a lot of options. If you want people social, give them a tackboard and some paper and let them do their thing. If you’re creative, you can keep it cleaner and prettier than MySpace while giving your users the kind of options they want. And more.
3. MySpace doesn’t speak with authority. The system doesn’t tell you what you can and can’t do. That doesn’t mean it can do everything, or even close. But it does not pick and choose the options you can access. It doesn’t tell you what “MySpace” is for. It just exists, and people use it how they wish, no matter how awful the result. Remember when programming tools that your tools might be used for more than you expect. Plan for that. Make use of your users creativity and let them show you ways of extending your own system beyond where you might have expected.

MySpace is big, but there have been many big things on the internet that have faded into the dust. Building open and accessible systems that incorporate the broad strokes of what MySpace does right while avoiding and improving upon the many things it does wrong will be the key to building the next MySpace, which you should able to finish just in time for Web 3.0 to mock you.

April 17th, 2006 | Blogosphere