Coding with Jesse

Social Networking Spam

So everyone knows MySpace has gotten big. Really big. There are start-ups appearing every minute destined to become the next MySpace. This has attracted it a lot of attention.

Bands quickly realised the marketing power of MySpace. You can find MySpace pages for bands like Beck, Eminem, and of course millions of small bands.

If you have a MySpace page, you know that bands caught on to using MySpace as a way to do marketing thanks to the 'Add a friend' feature. They seem to constantly search on MySpace for potential fans, then ask those people to be their friends.

Now, the spammers have caught on. There are MySpace pages for the most mundane of commercial interests. How about this one which is just selling shoes, or this one which shallowly markets another web site. These aren't real people. Who wants to be friends with a shoe reseller?

I know this is just the beginning. Soon, MySpace spam will end up on every marketer's to-do list (along with "viral" movies on YouTube). And when that happens, when every MySpace member has to deny a handful of "friends" every day, then I think MySpace will fall. People are excited about the "MySpace generation", but I'm not sure they understand them. The more something is cool today, the more it will suck tomorrow. MySpace is about to become as uncool as the Backstreet Boys.

Published on August 28th, 2006. © Jesse Skinner

About the author

Jesse Skinner

Hi, I'm Jesse Skinner. I'm a web development coach & consultant. I teach web development teams how to scale up their server infrastructure, improve automated testing and monitoring, reduce costs, and modernize their legacy systems. I focus on empowering teams through customized training and coaching.

Feel free to email me. I'm eager to hear about your challenges and see how I can make your life easier.