Best Networking Site

Facebook has rehooked me into this crap. I mean it has Scrabulous.

It's also lacking the geocities-like user customized page, everyone's crappy bands spamming you with new songs and shows, and the overall junior high feel which MySpew has developed.

Friendster was fun back in the day but early MySpace was the nail in it's in coffin. Others are minor fun, but still, I think FaceBook has the edge these days.

Man, I have profiles on at least five of these. I am pathetic.

Saddest : www.myface.com

The problem with Facebook is... everyone and their freaking *boss* in on Facebook. I don't want to be part of a community where my colleagues can look at my pages and see who is slacking (I have just heard this exact conversation going on behind me). My internet presence is just not something for that environment.

The internet should be an escape from all this office crap political bullshit, not another way to exercise it.

MySpace has seem to become and remained the networking tool for people in bands, or in music promotion. So I'll stick with it for exactly those reasons. Also, you can view/listen without having to be a member, that's quite powerful as a tool. Anything I have to sign up for in order to check out, I navigate away from pretty quick.

I really wish I could do last.fm - if we didn't have such a brutal lockdown on software on our system, I'd use that.

Man, I have profiles on at least five of these. I am pathetic.

I think I've only even ever heard of five of them. That's not some weird bragging point on my part; I think you could say that I'm feeling pathetic for the opposite reason that you are.

i.e., I have no profiles on any "social networking" site, and am missing out on, um, something. Or something like that.

Nobody can see your Facebook profile unless they find you and you choose to add them. Also from what I've seen, Facebook doesn't seem to engender the TMI and questionable content that people post on MySpace.

MySpace did not start out for music but it has become so overrun by that and by teens (or would-be teens) that I think it's become a turn-off for many. That networking aspect for bands is lost if you run out of fans to network with.

And while I understand the community aspect that bands find useful there, as a web developer I cringe at the increasing trend of bands to use their myspace page as their sole web presence.

Agreed. I'm not a web developer, but artists' own websites >>>> myspace pages.

Well, that's a bit elitist. The budgets of even semi-professional websites are way out of the reach of most indie bands. It's a great leap forward for bands to be able to maintain a web presence by their own limited skills. Even a generic MySpace site can tell you a great deal about a band - in fact, most of the things one really wants to know.

Long before MySpace, bands managed to build and maintain sites with limited means, using friends, learning on their own. This is the beauty of the web.

Actually my problem here comes in two boxes:

development: Myspace is a poorly run, badly built site. It's not advisable for any real venture other than hooking up friends. What happens if it falls apart? How can you communicate? You have no control over it and without something of your own to fall back on, you're screwed.

Communication - Again poorly built and designed - gives forth a poor image. Also it's owned by a huge media conglomerate. Do you really want Rupert Murdoch to have ownership of your creative materials and your main source of communication and promotion?

Bands must control their own image and their own endeavors and I don't think MySpace does this. In working with bands and their (own) websites I've had to stress constantly to them the importance of them registering and owning their domain, not me, not their manager, not their label. This is very important for them even if they don't realize it.

Putting all your faith in News Corp just seems like very bad business to me.

The internet should be an escape from all this office crap political bullshit, not another way to exercise it.

completely otm...It's depressing enough to see work relationships duplicated on facebook.

also

Nobody can see your Facebook profile unless they find you and you choose to add them

That's not quite right is it? I've seen loads of profiles when I haven't been added. Plus I think you can see anyone of your network - and if you join a network like 'London', that's a lot of people.

It depends on your settings.

I've never seen anyone's info other than name, location and list of networks until I've added them. Even browsing my networks I can't see other people's profiles (or even w/in groups like ILX)

x-postio

I'm elitist in the sense that having to look at MySpace pages hurts my eyes.

And I agree for the most part w/Ms Misery's points. I don't think that bandwidth is so prohibitively expensive that indie artists can't maintain their own website. And surely some bandmember possessing the requisite know-how, or a friend of friend or whoever can be recruited to design the page.

...and hurts your ears, most of the time

Facebook is currently down, haha!

I was going to say, I wasn't sure if it went down or if it was the new greasemonkey app I installed.

no scrabulous during lunch. :(

What were you doing with greasemonkey?

auto login script, i hate having to click login every time i go to the site. I'm like a firefox princess. I also have one that displays all of the pictures bigger without my needing to click them (I jsut roll over them) and one that gets rid of those frustrating ads-- sorry, facebook, but I wasn't going to click them anyway.

I barely notice the ads. Do you mean the ones on the right side when you're looking at the front page?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The Mormon Church has one called myfamily so you're guaranteed not to run into the seXxy or people who smoke. It's pretty nicely set up. I made one for my family because they'll never send me photos from their digital camera otherwise; asking them to upload them to some website is way easier for them. Plus they cannot see, then, that I have posted swears and photoshopped myself into famous Mormon paintings on myspace.

No LinkedIn.com?

<i>everyone and their freaking *boss* in on Facebook</I>

ya rly. it was nice to keep in touch w/friends who moved to the west coast and then i added a couple work friends and now i have to be careful abt what i post on there

I vote Last FM, because it serves a purpose other than as a hollow substitution for meat-space social busy work.

I guess Myspace has bands, and I have been notified of concerts and parties, but Last FM is less annoying. Facebook? Barely on there.

facebook is getting bloated super fast with all these dumb applications. also the groups are pretty useless as far as i can tell

I need a new one that isn't MySpace or Facebook. Both have been blocked from work. :-(

And I was complaining about stupid bastard work people over using them, and now they've ruined it for us all!

No LinkedIn.com?

You left mine out so "other"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Last FM personal radio(subscribers only) is great.

MySpazz falls lower than I would have thought.