OK, I admit it. I have a MySpace site. Well, not a site, really. I have an account that has really minimal information on it. I signed up for the account basically because I was curious what all the buzz was about. Also, my daughter has an account there and I wanted some way to see what she was doing (not much, it appears, I think there is a lot of that: signing up for an account, then, after the novelty wears off, doing not much at all with your site).

But suddenly, today, I got a message through MySpace from what appeared to be a young woman who happened to have moved to Eureka and ostensibly likes more mature men. Hey, that’s me! So I clicked on a link which took me to the full message:

How’s it goin? I’m Kristy, I just moved to the Eureka area and I wanna meet a nice guy around here :). I moved here to California a couple of weeks ago for work and now that I’m here I have nobody to hang out with! I read your profile… You’re cute and I liked what you had to say :).

I’m 25/F/single and I’m lookin for a guy who is a little bit older or more mature than me. You say you’re 54 and you’re cute so I guess you’re qualified 🙂

My friend Jen from back home suggested I tried using myspace to meet people in my area. I just signed up and my profile sux hehe. I do have a blog/profile page at (site deleted to prevent further advertising this sleazy come on) … I have alot of photos and stuff up if you wanna see me.

I left you a personal msg on my homepage and I took a new pic for you today. Come check me out when you have a chance, k?

Lookin forward to seeyin ya,
Kristy

Wow! Kristy left a special message just for me on her home page! Thanks, Kristy! I’m sure you live right down on D St. with a bunch of folks who also take pictures of themselves in revealing outfits.

OK. So, by the time I finally got to this message the actual account (or profile in MySpace) had been deleted. In fact, the only messages I have are from people whose profiles have been deleted. Well, except one from my daughter who mocked me for having only ‘Tom’ in my friends list. Tom happens to be a MySpace employee, one of many, I suppose who gets assigned to each new signup, kind of like a tour guide. I have yet to communicate with Tom.

I’ve gotten off topic here. Kristi was just so hard to resist… What I really wanted to write about was the growing trend against social networking sites. It was inevitable. The Internet is full of distractions. And distractions tend to attract crowds. The trouble with crowds is they are easily distracted and move from one “cool thing” to the next. And social networking is a huge distraction. There are tons of sites for telling stories about yourself (or your created self) and finding like minded (or like created) folks. MySpace is only the best known of these sites. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands. Some are general in nature, like MySpace, but others are specific to a certain theme or interest.

But how much of this self-revealing, networking stuff can one take? Or participate in? Who has that much time? Who has that much to say about oneself? Right now Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp bought MySpace looks like a genius. The site continues to grow and strike deals. And other sites are trying to hang on to its coat tails. But trends and crowds move on. And on the Internet they both can move like lightning. How long will it be before the next big thing and MySpace will have morphed in to someting else in order to try and retain its market share.