Resurrecting MySpace for a Worthy Cause
Posted in My Life, Social Media on 12. Jan, 2010
How many times a day do you get pinged by a friend to check out an article? Or how many times do you scan through your Twitter stream and see a close virtual friend ask you to vote for something? A dozen? Two dozen times a day? This social sharing culture has enabled all of us to rally support on a national…even global level. It’s a beautiful thing.
Today Sloane Berrent DM’d me a link to check out. She is a finalist in the Myspace Journal competition, an online media event in which Myspace has partnered with the Wall Street Journal to send one lucky winner to the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters . By attending this prestigious event the winner chosen will be able to bring attention to a cause of their choice. Right now 5 lucky ladies have made it to the final round, with Sloane being one of them.
Okay so here is the real reason I decided to sit down in the middle of the day and write a personal blog post—today I signed into my Myspace account.
Yup it happened. I broke my streak—a little over two years of NOT logging into Myspace. Why am I proud of this number? I don’t know. I am though. I think its like a big F-U to Myspace for letting the glitter cat banners take precedent over my search for awesome music. Maybe it was because it took me months to finally spam out all of the notifications they managed to send. Although it is because of those notifications I now know exactly when all 2000 of my closest fake friends have birthdays. Ugh.
All I know is for the past two years I –like many of you—have enjoyed the side jokes regarding Myspace. In fact just the other night, Kristy, Shannon, and myself spent 6 minutes of our evening trying to figure out what the public notification was called on the Myspace interface, only to triumphantly scream BULLETIN. That sums up the personal relationship I have had with Myspace for the past two years. I took pride in ignoring her.
Then today the DM. First thought was “I’ll support Sloane in this for sure” after all this lady has traveled the world saving lives, rebuilding towns, reminding us all that we have an ability to make the world better. She has recently relocated to New Orleans with a desire to help this city rebuilt into the gem it once was, and brings with her a team of global supporters. One of which I consider myself to be.
So as I click the link and find myself as a Myspace Log-in page, I literally panicked. Uhmm is she serious? Myspace. What the &%^$? So I pushed forward and tried to remember my password. Yeah that was a huge #passwordfail. So I actually went and reset the password enabling me to log-in and vote for Sloane.
While a bit of my pride may have been lost I can’t help but think if ever there was a worthy time to break the streak this was it. So why write a post about it? Well I’m a geek. I know that most of you still have Myspace accounts (us Internet-ers rarely DELETE an online presence…) and I’m willing to bet that when you admit that you still have an account you quickly follow it with “but I haven’t signed in for years.” Right? Well what if I told you that signing in and voting for Sloane Berrent could help save a city? What if I said bitch slapping that chip off your shoulder actually did something good for the world outside your cubicle?
I think that would make for a pretty good Tuesday. #justsayin
So how about it? Once we all get in there we can send each other dirty messages, and post glittery postcards on each others’ wall. Is it called a wall? Ugh here I go again.
Vote for Sloane Here. Many thanks folks. Much glittery, sparkly, happy love.
I would but… I canceled my account about 6 months ago.
What an amazing post. First of all thank you so much for writing this. Second of all – I completely agree about the whole MySpace thing. I hadn’t logged in a long time – I still click on links to listen to music and find new bands but hadn’t logged into my account in a long time.
I think contests like this one then are a great and effective tool for getting people back in the MySpace community. And you’re right – it’s badge of honor to NOT delete something but not log in either. We switch so quickly from one service to another, and it’s a tide coming in and coming out affect. It’s been a crazy interesting day to see all the messages about people talking about MySpace and this voting process.
Thank you for your support and you’ll see my promoting online all week. Fingers crossed!
xo Sloane
Poor MySpace. This post is what kind of media they really need right now. Sadly, MySpace and I have not seen eye to eye in a long time.
I think that there could still be a way to draw back users to MySpace. If AOL can keep it’s doors open and provide service to customers then MySpace should be able to, right?
I very much agree and appreciate your post.
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