I asked my 16 year old daughter why she was not using the Blog that I had designed for her and I got that look that said, dad your to old… Ouch well it turns out that what us geeks like in the way of structure is not the way things are done on MySpace. Freedom to express one self in a almost repulsive way based upon some of the pages I have seen is what is attracting a huge audience of young people to MySpace.
I have to admit someplace over their I have an account but don’t think I ever did anything with it. But the point my daughter made was that the blog, that I had designed for her although beautiful and well laid out is not at all cool. She cannot easily modify it, and all the underlying HTML that I understand is not her cup of tea. So it boils down really to simplicity and although I personally cringe when I look at some of the sites, I was amazed to find out through a Business Week article that a heck of a lot of money in advertising is being spent over there..
Which should make us all think that we don’t need to be so rigid and ought to have more fun with our websites and companies need to make it easier for people like my daughter to do her own design and have it just work instead of having dad shell out some money to have a design that will be out of date next year or outgrow the mindset she is in today. [Business Week]
“Freedom to express one self in a almost repulsive way based upon some of the pages I have seen is what is attracting a huge audience of young people to MySpace.”
As someone that knows html i am too much of an eltiist to visit myspace not to mention the egregious amount of advertising.