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Three things I beg you not to do with your MySpace page

Posted by on 27th Sep 2007 Blogging 4 comments

Probably most of you don’t use MySpace as your primary blog, but any blogger can learn from the MySpace don’ts.

Don’t set up sounds that play whenever someone visits your site. This includes funny noises, YouTube clips and that song “Wonderland,” no matter how much you might love it. A lot of people surf the web when they’re supposed to be doing something else: at office jobs, in class, etc. When we’re pretending to create a spreadsheet, having Jack Johnson suddenly blare out of the speakers blows our cover. This also goes for your band’s website, by the way. I’ll click your songs when I’m ready to play them, you don’t need to have them lurking in wait for me. If a site has sound, I don’t revisit it.

Don’t use a tiled background. Even if it’s cute/hot/scary. In fact, any patterned backdrop makes the text hard to read. Even if you’ve got the text boxed on a plain background, the pattern is distracting. And usually ugly.

Don’t overcrowd your main page. This is the thing I hate most about MySpace, all those boxes. When people come to your site, give them one coherent reason to stay (i.e. your entry of the day, or an interesting blurb about you or the site), and links to anything else you want them to see. I don’t care who your favorite bands are if I don’t yet know who you are.

4 comments - Leave a reply
  • Posted by Patrick on 27th Sep 2007

    I don't know about these..

  • Posted by A Blog about Nothing on 27th Sep 2007

    Myspace is aptly named. Because it is "my space", not yours. If there is any place doing these things is truly appropriate and expected it is on Myspace.

    If you're not supposed to surf the web at work don't. If you don't like anything but the default theme use firefox and greasemonkey. I'm not sure how you avoid overcrowding the "main page" as far as I know you only get one profile page…?

  • Posted by Kris Larson on 28th Sep 2007

    I think I struck a nerve. You're both right; these are my personal preferences and shouldn't be presented as hard and fast rules.

  • Posted by Kevin on 29th Sep 2007

    I think it's still good to have guidelines and to get tips on this kind of thing. I mean, the same thing could be argued about your own blog(eg. its your space, your blog).

    If you have a blog with a lot of readers on myspace then these are things you would be looking at :)