If you’re a MySpace user, you are undoubtedly familiar with the unmitigated load of crap that assaults the screen when you go to check the latest inane bulletins by people you don’t really talk to. Ads promotions clutter and distract and generally make an already sad experience even worse. But with a few simple tweaks, you can clean up the interface, as you can see here:
This keeps everything you need in a much simpler, uncluttered format. It’s pretty easy to do as well if you already use Firefox. Here’s what you need for these same results:
Once done, simply make sure you are using the “new skin” on your MySpace homepage.
There you have it! Never be annoyed by all that junk again.
Browsing the
SA forums, I came across this slightly interesting
essay on class differences between the two major social networking sites. Admittedly, I have been becoming aware of a vague difference in the two myself, namely that the vast majority of the people I know are on Myspace instead of Facebook. I guess that puts me in the “low class” of internet users. Serious business!
The division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values. Embedded in that is a challenge to a lot of our assumptions about who does what. The “good” kids are doing more “bad” things than we are willing to acknowledge (because they’re the pride and joy of upwardly mobile parents). And, guess what? They’re doing those same bad things online and offline. At the same time, the language and style of the “bad” kids offends most upwardly mobile adults. We see this offline as well. I’ve always been fascinated watching adults walk to the other side of the street when a group of black kids sporting hip-hop style approach. The aesthetics alone offend and most privileged folks project the worst ideas onto any who don that style. When I see a divide like this, I worry because it reproduced the idea that the “good” kids are good and that Facebook participation is good.
[
Entire essay]
The essay does present some good insight into how the nature of the two sites perpetuates the class differences between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ kids, or the college bound on Facebook as being a step above.
One of the early hopes for the internet was to allow borderless and classless communication and communities. Unfortunately humans are far to wrapped up in both to not bring them along with them.