At a former job, years ago, I was part of a prank on a fellow worker who had several pictures of his wife and kids on his desk. We replaced those pictures with generic looking families we’d found in some clip art collection and left a memo on his desk, seemingly from the HR department, claiming that his family didn’t meet up with corporate standards (of which we had many) and the new images were more compliant.

That prank was funny because the only form of self expression we were allowed was with the pictures of our family. We couldn’t hang posters on the wall, we couldn’t put toys on our desk, we couldn’t even have a desk lamp or stapler that didn’t match everyone elses’ lamps or staplers. Removing the freedom of having your own family was the next logical extension.

Many web sites are not unlike that office environment. MySpace allows people who desire self expression (particularly desirable in the younger generations as part of their separation from their elders and coming into their own) to realize that desire. That’s why I think it has been so successful.

Here’s the irony I predict: At some point, that self expression will change to a different form, more outrageous and currently not allowed in MySpace. That new form will open an opportunity for another site (or something) to become even more popular, and, at the same time, have the effect of violating the sensibilities of all the MySpace advocates as they grow older and less accepting of change (like us old farts).

I just wrote a post having just the same conclusion a week ago.

….Technology and even Visual Appealness are not as important as they are to other websites. Without these, the only thing I can see that make MySpace successful is it’s allowance to users to customize their own pages, to an extent that no others allow to. How many people left msnspace or still refuse to use it because of its lack of freedom of layout and template customization. And how many people feel timid being told that cannot access ones profile because the person is not in my network yet.

MySpace removed all these constrains and allows anyone, even unregistered users to browse register users pages. Also, users can add any objects to their personal pages, YouTube, flashes, windows media player, as well as set transparency and background images etc.. To me those pages look totally unpolished and lack artful overall look. But I guess young people are tough and are able to survive and expand their life on those. Ya, so maybe the generation is fairly “realistic” actually, as contents are most important, over-emphasized decorations not neccessary. …..

HAPPY ALMOST BIRTHDAY!!!

I agree the freedom is what makes myspace successful. MySpace allows everyone to do what they do ugly or not.

myspace and freedome??
okay