Just to set the stage, I’m a bit of a social networking site junkie. I belong to far too many of them, mostly for “research purposes” since I’m a web designer myself. Note the quote marks around “research purposes”, stretching them across the gamut of “interesting use of tag-based folksonomies here, I’ll make a note of that” to “dear lord, that’s what 19-year olds are wearing these days?” Luckily I don’t have enough time to spend on any one of them to do too much research.

An elite list of bookmarks.

But anyway, UselessAccount.com vs. Change.org. Here we go.

On the one hand, Useless Account offers the following features:

1. Unlimited account editing
2. Truth in advertising

It’s #2 that really sets it apart from so many other sites out there. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that Useless Account completely lives up to the hype.

On the other hand, Change weighs in with these promises:

1. Ending Global Warming
2. Empowering Women
3. Advancing Gay Rights
4. Eliminating Borders

Honestly, the list just keeps going on and on…

Some pretty tall orders there. A little ridiculous if you ask me. I mean sure, it hooks you up directly with Non-profits working on these issues and even allows you to find and commit to actions that help these issues, but who are we kidding. It clearly can’t compete with the “Under Promise, Over Deliver” that UselessAccount has going for it.

In this day and age of information overload, there’s something reassuring about UselessAccount’s simple interface. It is 90% an advertisement for itself, with a very, very tiny “Login or Create an Account” near the top. Contrast this with the, although immaculately well-designed, “functionality” of Change.org. For example, when my colleague and paramour Sarah visited the former she immediately burst into laughter, presumably over how laughably simple to use the site was, whereas the latter filled her dread. “It really shows you how screwed up the non-profit/industrial complex is,” she sighed.

Following her lead, I have to give the win to UselessAccount. No doubt some people will find use for a social network that allows them to describe, collaborate, and ultimately bring about a visionary new world, but do we really need another site reminding us how bad everything is? I just go to MySpace for that.

While we’re on the subject of social networking sites and the whole “Web 2.0″ thing, how much of a dork am I that this video actually gets me all choked up? Seriously. Tears.

I’m not lying or even embellishing. Feel free to check out Time Magazine’s official site and see for yourself.

They cite many of my achievements over the last year. As Americans grew weary of the overproduced drivel on television they increasingly turned to sites like YouTube for entertainment and I was there with my videos from Japan. As Americans sought connection they looked for long lost friends and family on sites like MySpace and I was there, smiling back at them. As Americans rejected corporate news they turned to alternative sources, like blogs, and I was there with the Stanifesto. I haven’t even mentioned the events I’ve added to Upcoming or the links I’ve added to Del.icio.us, but I think you get the idea.

I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t even aware that Stan was a candidate! I know, right? Honestly, I was a little surprised myself… mostly because, if I qualify for these sorts of contests, why haven’t I won any before?

This year, George Clooney was named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for a second time. That’s right, he was chosen back in 1997 as well. Granted, People does have a blog where you can nominate men you know personally (how very 2.0 of them), but are our celebrity stocks so depleted we have to double-dip in the man candy already? That’s like nominating someone with the last name of “Bush” or “Clinton” for president ever again—kind of a big “F-U” to the other 300 million or so Americans who haven’t been tapped yet. Like me.

It’s the same thing with that other big contest, the Nobel Peace Prize. They really need to take Time’s lead and honor me with a golden dove or stick of dynamite or whatever you get when you win. I’m especially qualified as well. Take a look at the list of past winners. I’ve ordered substantially fewer people killed than either Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat.

I’ll be submitting my demo reel for Oscar consideration as soon as I have some time to burn a DVD.

Here they are, ten reasons that MySpace is not all its cracked up to be:

1. MySpace doesn’t actually have over one hundred million members. Given that there are 12 Paris Hiltons, and I get tantalizing friend invites from fake profiles all the time, it’s reasonable to assume that some percentage of the 100,000,000 are not actually “real people” by any sort of rational measurement.
2. MySpace’s traffic is inflated by bad design. This summer, onlookers watched in horror as MySpace pushed past Yahoo in page views. But many contend that MySpace’s poor interface artificially inflates their page views. With good design, it’s suggested that MySpace’s traffic would drop to a third to an eighth of current levels.
3. MySpace is clogging the tubes. A typical user profile can easily be over 200k with all the unnecessary markup, banner ads, and poorly optimized JavaScript—and let’s not forget the pictures, animations, and videos your “friends” leave in the comments section. That bandwidth has to come from somewhere and ISPs charge for it in spectacularly hard-to-understand ways.
4. MySpace is not a team player. They’ve recently made the decision to handicap YouTube videos by disallowing external links from Flash widgets. Their rationale is bursting with hubris:
   

   If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace.
   —Peter Chernin, NewsCorp COO

   Sure, Web 2.0 is based on MySpace; If I recall, Al Gore was the project lead.

5. MySpace is being used to spy on you. More than secret crushes and scorned ex-lovers are reading your profile trying to peer into your life. The NSA, perpetually in trouble for illegal wiretaps and the like, also monitors social networking sites in order to “connect the dots” between you and criminal activities. Blog about your friend that runs a pirate radio and you could find yourself subjected to some additional security checks the next time you fly.
6. MySpace is just a fad. Yes, we all have a crush on Danah Boyd, who has so deftly defended MySpace on many an occasion. Still, while the necessity of youth having a space for congregation will never diminish (anyone remember arcades?), even she admits that it need not always be MySpace. There’s no shame in going out looking for that next big thing already, especially if MySpace doesn’t work for you.
7. MySpace contributes to infoglut (aka information overload). We humans are generating a ridiculous amount of electronic information. Do you really need an email telling you that someone has sent you an email?
8. MySpace is a failure of humanity. The science seems pretty sound; it has numbers and everything.
9. MySpace is ruining tomorrow’s web designers. It seems like knowing anything about CSS is actually an obstacle to customizing your page in any way. All the hacks necessary to make simple changes are polluting kids brains with non-semantic, table-based web design. It took ten years to get out off those dark ages, what happens when these kids start getting jobs? Remember when all the kids who used to play with JavaScript to make their backgrounds change colors got jobs and invented AJAX?
10. Finally, my best friends aren’t even on MySpace. Seriously, I have to, like, call them. So annoying.

Feel free to suggest your own.

Unfortunately, the bit of deception was noticed by a few Wall Street Journalists. The “amateur filmmaker” happened to have an email address that traced back to PR firm DCI, which is on the Exxon payroll. Just to make the conceit complete, he had even set up a MySpace account: http://myspace.com/goreiscrazy.

I’m honestly laughing aloud (LOL in the parlance of our times) at the whole thing, for two major reasons. First, the MySpace account as of this writing has 0 friends. Not even Tom thought this guy was worthy of an invite, and his “extended network” is fast approaching 100,000,000.

Also, the video, sad to say, is completely boring. Not even so bad it’s good (like those awesome ads for Carbon Dioxide produced by CEI). Here’s a sampling of the comments on YouTube:

This is sad. You’d think that a corporate sponsored video would actually be at least funny. Exxon–you need to rehire! This video sucks!

---

I wouldn’t mind this oppossing view if it were funny or interesting. It’d be nice if they didn’t reference South Park, though. You know you’re sub-par when you do things like that. For example, you watch a lame movie and one character mentions Jaws. Then you start thinking, “Man, I’d really rather be watching Jaws right now.”

---

$3.10 a gallon and they spend the profits on this kaka? Pity that the windfall apparently can’t buy you any “smart” or “interesting”.

In not completely unrelated news, my favorite favorite corporate shill, Steven Milloy is throwing a hissy about the State of California wanting to know if his constant doubting of climate change and his taking money from automakers and oil companies are in any way, y’know… maybe… related? I think he’s my favorite favorite because he gets pissy like this so often.