Late 2004 I had a friend I met through Yahoo chat who only had images through this weird network type thing called MySpace… She had joined the network because of the indie music scene on there and socialized with both real and online friends through there.

This was before their was wider network access to MySpace and therefore I had to join in order to view any member’s profile information or photos. So in early 2005 I joined MySpace…

And hated it the entire time I was involved.

MySpace was like the AOL of social networks to me. Oh, it had a lot of bells and whistles you have seen copied and imitated by other networks… It introduced people to the web in general in a lot of ways (design wise – with customizable profiles where you could change every aspect of your profile with a bit of CSS know-how, which fathered an entire sub-market of web design sites). It was the forefather of other social network sites and catered to the mainstream while it’s “competitor” — Facebook — was aimed specifically at the college crowd and linking college students and alumni.

I connected with a few people on MySpace – old friends, new friends – but generally loathed the experience. MySpace was technologically obsolete, even if it’s vision was advanced. Social networking and it’s strength for marketing and message spread was something only just catching on.

The problem with MySpace was that it did not advance itself like most web properties do — no significant design changes, no huge additions or subtractions. Oh, there was one significant change that helped put it on the outs with me and others: More flash advertising. Videos, interactive applets and other intensive ads that belabored my browser and annoyed my web surfing experience. I don’t want to see a video for “Miss March” when I just want to see the message that was sent to em from an old friend! I just wanna’ log in and get it done.

Why did I stick around four years with MySpace? Friends who aren’t on Facebook (which I joined at the behest of hockey bloggers in 2006 or so, after the network started allowing the general public to join). Family as well. Just appeasing them because there was no way to stay connected to them without a Myspace profile.

But really, it’s over now.

I didn’t like the Web 1.0 design, I hated the crappy design jobs that people employed on personal profile pages, I hated (abhorred, loathed, etc) all the flash bullshit that was lumped onto people’s profiles (tons of youtube videos stacked on top of each other, tons of different photo album bells and whistles in the middle of the profile, etc) as well as the advertisements.

In the end, MySpace felt like a toy that had never had it’s packaging improved. A toy that’s never had it’s design flaws corrected besides the barest of changes. A toy that’s been improved-upon and leaped over by it’s competitors.

A toy that’s lost it’s novelty and wore out my patience early on. I endured. But no longer.

A little more than three years ago, I wrote a quick post about friends from my childhood in New York and Sylvain Avenue Elementary School. I invoked a few names in said post without thinking anyone would… well, you know, come across the dang thing. It’s just one web page, one blog post, out of millions and billions of web pages on the interweb, right?

OK, I’m lying. I knew that there was a high chance someone would come across the post, but the question remained if they would, and who it would be, and how they’d react.

Flash forward to a Saturday night in the autumn of 2007 and an email, sent through this site, from one of my long lost friends who I referenced. A year of conversation with them later and the posting of my 4th-grade-class-picture later led me to get back in touch with quite a few people. I don’t want to reference them by full name here as I am guilty enough of name-dropping in the past in order to get facts straight… But I’ve gotten back in touch with long lost friends who I had known since Kindergarden, I’ve gotten back in touch with shorter-term friends who I had known from 3rd grade on…

It’s almost scary about the amount of re-connecting that’s transpired through Facebook for me. It’s also heartwarming to know I was not flat-out forgotten by people after I left New York.

Here’s a quick way to either get on my bad side or get yourself flat out removed from my friends list on Facebook: Use status updates for advertising and only advertising.

I hate to break it to bloggers across the Internet but Facebook has a tool built in called Notes and that gives you the ability to import your RSS feed from your blog onto your profile.

Your status? That’s about you. That’s not for blog headlines, requests for people to become-a-fan-of through Facebook Pages or some other promotional crap like that. If you need help marketing your blog or site, there are plenty of tools out there on the web and plenty of better (less annoying) strategies regarding social media.

I add friends and networking contacts because I’m friends with them or they are colleagues. Sometimes it’s because I am a fan. But it’s a real big pet peeve of mine for someone to find the only use for their Facebook profile as a large EAT AT JOE’S advertisement.

…I’m on Facebook. For good or for ill.