Comments on: MySpace Business Lesson: Communication

By: danny

danny — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:36:46 +0000

I think its easier to communicate on internet. and all your applications have the ability to help users communicate. Communication will always be the killer feature on the net avd why not its easier to communicate. But some people still like face to face communication a better way to interact. So its the matter of personal choice. But they cant deny the importance of online interaction.

By: Jonathan Holst

Jonathan Holst — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 12:09:39 +0000

Am I the only one feeling you left out Skype in your list? That’s pretty effective and easy communication.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:38:21 +0000

To clarify that, it seems that people are more interested in feeling connected, rather than in actually communicating anything significant.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:27:49 +0000

I was impressed by two sentences:
“Anything that makes communication between individuals easier will most likely become a success.”, and “…people aren’t ashamed to drop a line because it’s much easier talking online than it is face-to-face for some reason.”

Is “easier” necessarily a good thing? As you point out, it certainly is appealing. But, as Keith points out, he sometimes prefers to just chat online, rather than pick up the phone.

Most of the comments I read in websites are not very profound, rather trivial actually, and certainly limited in their interactiveness; after all, it’s only text. I find face-to-face interaction ever so much more rich; when I can see a person’s face, or at least, hear their voice, and respond immediately.

By: sunshine

sunshine — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 04:17:45 +0000

I agree with Keith with the “how much better it could be” sentiment. It does feel good to get comments and freind requests but every other week something is broken or down or just ugh and it could be so much easier.

I understand why it’s popular… I just don’t understand why they have no desire to be MORE popular. I can’t think of any real reason not to clean up the profile template, add an “advanced” profile editor that lets those that care insert css styles right into the header (or link to their own external stylesheet), and streamline the whole thing so it’s easier to find people that share interests, harder to find faults and so that you don’t have to wait 45 seconds+ for the homepage to load.

The people that use and and don’t care will continue to use it, the ones that use and do care will become loyal for life and it will attract new users who were completely turned off before.

Or am I missing something important?

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:44:59 +0000

That’s the thing though, like a videogame it has an addiction that people don’t readily see. It feels good to get friend requests, it feels good to see new comments and messages. If you don’t get it, maybe you understand checking your stats every 60 seconds after getting posted on Digg or something like that.

It is amazing though how so many people I know and hangout with have replaced IM and email with Myspace as their main communication tool.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:21:27 +0000

It’s funny you mention World of Warcraft and communication. There are times when I just login to see if my friends are in there and chat with them in game as opposed to picking up the phone.

I’ve never really sat down to ask myself why the hell I do that, but…

Anyway, I’m not huge into MySpace and I always wondered why it’s so huge (I’ve got LOTS of friends who practically obsess over it) given it’s myriad of problems.

I guess it’s hard seeing past its problems and knowing so many ways it could be better. Now having used it a bit, and looked at it as a customer as opposed to a designer who could help make it better, I think I understand it a bit better.

It’s quite obvious that it’s benefits and what it has to offer far outweigh it’s problems. Still, I can’t help but wonder how much better it could be…