Why I Don’t Like MySpace

I joined MySpace recently, mainly because Sarah (my sister) did, and I wanted to see what the hype is about.

Here’s the things I don’t like about it:

• When I logged in just now there was some completely random person listed under my friends
• My profile says “I don’t want kids”, but when I go to change it I actually have “No Answer” selected already
• It took me a while to find out how to even get to that option because there is no “Edit” link (or anything vaguely similar) on my profile page – you have to go back to “Home” first!
• There’s no obvious way to reply to comments – no “reply” link and you’re not allowed to post on your own comments!
• Not only that but it doesn’t say you’re not allowed to, it says “Error: You must be someone’s friend to make comments about them”, and if you try to add yourself it says “Confirm Add Friend: You cannot add yourself as a friend.”
• I added 3 friends (2 of them have confirmed it), but my profile says “You have 0 friends. You haven’t added any friends yet.”
• Every person’s profile says “x is in your extended network” – whether you know them or you have no connection to them at all and even if you’re not logged in
• A lot of people have music set to autoplay – particularly annoying when you’re listening to iTunes already!
• It says “To disable clickable links in Interests / Music / Movies / Television / Books / Heroes, put a <z> anywhere in the box.” – why not just have a check box??
• Entering an email address in the “people” search box returns “We weren’t able to find a ‘email@entered.com’ on MySpace, but when I found the “email search” box instead (a few clicks later) and entered the same address it did find them
• “Inbox” says “Listing 1-6 of 6″, but there are no messages there!
• Other than that (from a HCI perspective), total lack of consistency

I could go on with all the smaller things I can find wrong, but I won’t.