social networking
MySpace fucks up - again
- Posted by Rob (#1) on August 8, 2006 14:51 CEST
Perhaps I should start a dedicated blog to write about MySpace errors.. because once again the site it horribly broken and I can't visit Bif Naked's profile:
Found a cyclic link in http://www1.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=11152032
Fortunately my social life doesn't depend on MySpace and I've found (read: created) a much better social network, but I feel sorry for people who take MySpace's lack of quality for granted.
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- Tags: MySpace, social networking, user profiles, Bif Naked
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On-line safety through common sense
- Posted by Rob (#1) on July 4, 2006 12:45 CEST
Please put down that webcam for a while and while you're at it, put those boobs back where they belong as well. Profile sites such as MySpace are dangerous. Join any such network and you will soon end up in some pervert's basement. Raped and prostituted if you're lucky, dismembered in all other cases.
Or that's the impression one would get by reading The Dead Kids of Myspace for a while. It doesn't even matter whether you are the stereotypical 14-year-old inexperienced virgin (as if!) or not:
Two girls - 14- and 15-years-old - chatted on MySpace with a man for two weeks, claiming to be an 18-year-old named "Natalia." When the man showed up for a tryst at Natalia's supposed apartment, the two girls robbed him at gunpoint!
Scott Granneman's defense of social networks quotes heavily from the list of MySpace victims, but then fortunately makes the same point I've been making for the past eleven years, when I first started to meet people "from the Internet" in real life:
Look, I know there are really bad people using MySpace to do really bad things. If its criminal, they should be caught and punished. But I also know that there are really bad people in the grocery stores, at the movie theaters, in parks, and even on the other end of the phone.
Dead on. I'm also sick of the "Internet is dangerous" hype. The majority of MySpace's 87 million users know and apply the decades-old common sense rule to never meet in private and on your own, so why can't most policy makers, columnists and parents? Follow common sense and MySpace offers long weekends full of consensual sex yet void of dismemberment. No amount of parental guidance or law expansion necessary whatsoever.
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- Tags: dating, Internet, MySpace, social networking, meeting
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Start popping comment cherries
- Posted by Rob (#1) on July 3, 2006 01:12 CEST
What do you get when you combine:
- an already quite generic CMS (my beloved Kiki) capable of adding comment functionality to basically any database object,
- extremely "l33t" hacker skills,
- three hours of spare time on a train journey and
- an almost fanatical devotion to the pope Tom?
Profile pages where registered users can leave each other comments! I'll admit that I'm merely reinventing the wheel because this has of course already been done on countless profile and social networking sites. But I still like to tell Murdock to be afraid: be very afraid, Rupert. Not that I plan on getting bigger than MySpace (please no), but building something prettier and better shouldn't be too hard! (Feature suggestions for a next moment of boredom are welcome. And start popping, people!)
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- Tags: Kiki, MySpace, comments, profiles, social networking
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