It’s right there in my “Friend Updates:” Apparently, my friend Tom — you know, the MySpace founder guy who is everybody’s default Friend — has added a new song from some singer-songwriter or other to his profile.
However there’s one small problem with this. Tom’s not my Friend.
When I first signed up for MySpace over a year ago (yup, I was late), I thought that it was a stupid idea to have Tom as one of my Friends, so I de-Friended him almost instantly.
So, if Tom’s not my Friend, why am I being told about the music he’s adding to his profile?
Because it’s dirty rotten filthy spam. And MySpace oughta be ashamed.
Well, you might ask, why do I consider this spam? Why don’t I just see it as an advertisement, like what Facebook puts into its News Feeds?
Simple: because it doesn’t say that it’s an ad, like the inserts into the News Feeds. It’s pretending to be something that I’ve requested: an update from one of my Friends. Instead, it’s an advertisement for a musician. What else can it possibly be?
And because it’s an ad pretending not to be an ad, it’s spam.
Look, I understand the need for advertiser-supported websites. I mean, MySpace is absolutely lousy with advertising of every size and shape, and that’s fine. Hell, if they marked this as an advertisement, I’d be fine.
What I resent is the combination of advertising pretending to be something else, in a place on the site that should be totally and utterly sacrosanct. In theory, “Friend Updates” should be completely walled off from showing me anything that I don’t want. After all, not only am I supposed to be able to choose my Friends in the first place, I can then supposedly control which of my Friends I can see updates from.
Except for Tom, whom I can’t get rid of with the “Edit Updates” functionality, because he’s not one of my Friends. So I guess that he’ll just keep on spamming me.
I wonder what his real actual Friends think about this. Maybe they all got options, so its fine.
In the meantime, I’ll just go to MySpace less and less.
Very very much agreed. My only issue is that I also have other people who aren’t on my Friend List that are showing up in my Friend Updates. I can understand Tom being forced upon everyone but why the hell is it happening with random people in Missouri and in the UK? The only loop-hole I’ve found is to block them. This works fine, except it brings us back to square 1 – Tom. Can’t block him. I really get more and more sick of Myspace everyday, theres really nothing user-friendly left on it.
It’s too bad I hate Facebook as well – I have since day 1. It’s layout and everything about it just annoys me.
Someone needs to listen to these complaints and make a new and better web community.
Yes is Very annoying no one likes him so he is trying to be liked i Tried to e-mail him and he says he is not accepting any messages i bet every one is bugging him about it. Really annoying.. i might as well go back to Xanga.. Face book sucks and now myspace dose all these people want me to add them in my game guild crap and all just ask to be friends its insane.. and dumb!
uhh well youre an idiot you can just choose the people you want to recieve updates from
Uhh, well Luy, you’re even more of an idiot, because that’s exactly what I did.
The whole point of the article is that I blocked being able to receive updates from him, and it didn’t work.
OK Simple solution…… ready for this? I never even noticed what you people are talking about. I have the capability of ignoring what I don’t wish to see. Sooo just ignore it. Yes I see your point, but it is such a small thing to worry about. Ignore it!