MySpace Over?

/

Brad Berens from iMedia e-mailed me a link to this piece on PSFK by Jeff Squires that proclaims an end to MySpace.

MySpace’s hay-day might be over, because we’ve been noticing a surge of generic profiles circulating with no artistic, entertaining, or interactive elements whatsoever. It was almost assumed that the porn industry would get involved, but when the cheap pharmaceuticals, the refinance your mortgage, and the work-from-home schemes all entered MySpace, the fat lady started screaming.

When companies make profiles on MySpace, it’s only cool if they conform to the “local language.” They need to play by the same socially accepted rules as normal people. Friends don’t meticulously track down anyone and everyone within their network to show them some crap. Their needs to be an exchange between parties, so they both benefit from each other. When that rule is broken, it becomes spam, and no one likes spam (except Hawaii).

And that, my friends, is how "buy my crap" marketers destroy perfectly good online communities by bringing top-down marketing into bottom-up environments.

Yet another vote of support for the MySpace Has Jumped The Shark point of view.

Tom Deierlein Update

/

Michael Spitalnik posted this to the Old Timers List:

Tom Deierlein was shot by a sniper in East Baghdad on Saturday, September 9. The bullet entered his left hip and shattered part of his left rear pelvis, sacrum and right rear pelvis. He has full sensation in both legs with some nerve damage to his left leg. He is currently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Silver Springs, MD. While some of his injuries are significant, he is stable and in good spirits. For the next 3 months he will be involved in physical and neurological rehabilitation before the doctors can begin any reconstructive surgery on his pelvis.

At the time of the assault, Tom, as Civil Affairs officer, was working hard on the focus stabilization of the Sunni area called Adhamiyah (which you may have been reading about in the newspapers). In the 2 weeks prior he’d been focused on improving the schools, hospitals and health clinics as well as the sewage, water and electrical systems of this small part of Baghdad.

You’ll start to hear from him in the next couple of weeks as he settles into his rehabilitation and is able to connect to the Internet. He is very thankful for the prayers, love and support that he’s been receiving from both within and outside the industry.

We will continue to send updates as we learn more.

(Michael granted his permission to re-post this here.)

I just want to remind everyone that you can post your message to Tom at this site.

Still Digging It

/

Doc pointed out a couple weeks ago that Glen Phillips (of Toad The Wet Sprocket fame) has a blog up about his experience taking his family to Europe. I read through it quickly and then decided to check some of Glen's other sites to see what he's been up to the past few years. Toad was really big back when I was going to school in Lexington, VA in the early 90s. I caught the band at least a half dozen times while I was in college. One of the cool things about Toad's music is that it's stood the test of time. There's a lot of stuff from that era that's just plain unlistenable now, but I can always listen to Toad and I look forward to when a Toad selection comes up in rotation on my iPod. One of my fondest memories involved meeting some of the guys from Toad, as well as the guys in Gin Blossoms, after a show at Randolph-Macon Women's College. Everyone was really friendly, even though the drummer from the Gin Blossoms had really cut up his hand before the show when he fell on a beer bottle. (The drummer from Toad filled in for the show, playing both sets.)

Anyway, I checked out Glen's most recent single, "Always Returning," on iTunes and bought it. Good stuff. I recommend it highly. Next round of buying on iTunes I do, I'll pick up anything else Glen has on iTunes from his solo career.