Dear MSNBC News Site

I was at MSNBC’s website earlier today, and came into something that really upset me. It’s that stupid pop up thing that they have on their articles. You get like 7 seconds into reading the article and boop, this stupid thing pops up into your face trying to get you to agree to something.. What ever it is. Who reads that? We all look for the “not right now” or “close” or “no thank you” option and move on to the article we were reading. Don’t we?
Why is it suddenly okay to do a pop up again? Why is it okay to put this annoying message in our face trying to get us to agree to something or buy something, again?
Years ago that became so annoying that most advertising affiliate companies decided to make people agree not to make pop ups on their site because they didn’t want to be associated with that tact. Now, here we are again.. Dealing with the pop ups.
Sure it’s not a new window, it’s an applet. but that doesn’t make it better. It makes it annoying again.
Well I for one am boycotting MSNbC. A one man stand against websites that try and “aim for the original agenda” by redefining the trash they shoveled at us before. So I alone will never go to MSN websites. but yeah I will continue to use Microsoft updates untill windows 7 is no longer supported. I will then move to Linux because there is no way I am upping to windows 8 or anything that could potentially eventually force me to “enjoy those useful apps”.

Here’s the message I just posted in one of their articles.

Dear Msnbc
That stupid pop up you do right when we get 8 seconds into reading your article, makes me not want to read your article.
In fact I didn’t read this article after that. I searched for a spot to comment and tell you that you are a piece of internet trash for doing that.
We dealt with your stupid popups from 94 through to 98 when you were the “first to give the readers what they want” by being the first news site to stop popups. and when Yahoo continued. Now you call them aps as if we enjoy this crap.

KNOCK IT OFF!

We survived pop ups before by ditching sites like yours. Don’t make us do it again.

It won’t be long before virus writers exploit this popup just like they did the last few.

Mark Zuckerberg Rumored Buying Myspace

Story is that Mark Zuckerberg is buying Myspace.
I don’t see it happening. I see the chance that Mark and crew might implement even more stuff like Myspace content to their site, but not a buy out.
but the rumor says that Mark Zuckerberg and crew are going to bring it in, all Myspace links will still work, and there will be a slow gradual change of advertisements from Google adsense to the Facebook platform of advertisements.
Also within this rumor is the chatrooms will be brought back. Your existing Facebook profile and Myspace profiles will then merge, you have the option of which one . I doubt that. I see Facebook not wanting anything but their own.

I personally would like to see Myspace buy out yahoo or merge with Yahoo. and run Yahoo advertisements. Have you ever seen Yahoo’s chatrooms? Spam farm. They have no control of their own network.

I would also prefer to see MSN bring back their chatrooms and work more on their Myspace killer (lol) they started but never completed.
I would also like to see aim chat (or what ever in the heck aol used to have for their chatrooms)get in on this deal and use their servers or what ever is left of them

The more the choices we have, the more innovations we have and the more freedom to choose what network and what abilities we want to use and have. As of now there are still a few social sites that are sitting stale. Why not move them all up?
What social Changes would you like to see ?

Comparing Social Networks

We have to look at the word Social first.

“It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.”

I’m not so sure about the word “irrespective”; sounds a bit redneck to me.  That’s what I hate about Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it, even redneck Jim.

Well, to start…in that sense, Wikipedia is a type of social network but, let’s leave educational means of communication out of the ring of  social networking and, for this case, let’s leave out YouTube and Revver. They do have nice social methods (telling people their video is crummy). Let’s not go into all of that. Also, let’s not use Digg either; their methods of filtering the spam has eliminated most comfortable social connection.

So let’s nail out the big Social Networks.

Myspace . This has been known as the trailer park of the internet. Why? Well, because of the 1997 appeal. The place is full of the mouse tracers and sparkly profiles like Geocities had. Everyone adds every person they see on there as their friend. At one time, it was like a huge challenge to get as many people as you could get added to your friends. Then you spend the next three months weeding out all of the spammers and the real freaky people. It WAS an OK place to go and just read profiles. The profiles used to be like little ” I need a friend” resumes. Now, at most, they are nothing but favorite band lists. Really, why in the heck would someone list 200 bands. The ideal list would be, at most, 10-15 bands; not every dang band you ever listened to and didn’t want to smash your head with a hammer.

Then came the use of MySpace apps. MySpace apps are games that are connected with your MySpace profile. They allow you and your friends  to join in and play against others and their friends. Great concept. For those who chose to not play the games on MySpace, there’s the bulletin board. In the bulletin board you could write a short story and share it with your friends and let them comment on it or re-post it. There was also the use of the “blog system” so you could write a long story and show your friends or even share it with everyone on MySpace. Some days you could get up to 2000 reads of a blog on there. I know I have many times.

MySpace also has the  “mood” section, where you can show the world your mood and give a quick explanation of your mood.

The bulletins have been taken over by the friends who have MySpace applications. Some of the applications set to default the users to post to the bulletin and they do give the option to post to the bulletin, but most people don’t take time to read that junk and they just see the words “post click yes”, so they do. Now the bulletins are flooded with “billy bob just  walked three feet”. Stuff no one cares about.

It is a clunky piece of junk that has not had a major overhaul, since…well ever. But, it is an OK place to find a whole lot of people.

Facebook. Facebook is a lot like MySpace, even though the platform it is built on is different. The people join there and add as many people as they can. There is even an application to allow people to see people who know people they know. This gives them a chance to locate someone long gone. This also leads to 1000 people going “wait, who are you?? how do I know you?” For years I called Facebook the antisocial network.

Well, Facebook is just like the bulletin section of MySpace, but you really have no other means of group socialism. It is hard to just meet random people on Facebook because of the way the place is built. They are working on that, but, at the same time, they are messing up bad by integrating many features that MySpace has.

Facebook now has Apps also, just like MySpace.  If you have one friend who plays the apps on Facebook, then you have a million and one invites in your inbox, 200 app gifts on your main page, and the bulletin is flooded in updates in the  user’s progress in whatever game they find the most fun.

“Facebook is really sucky, with all the app invites and gifts and games and crap taking up the only means of ‘social interchange’, this place is worse than MySpace, except the custom profiles.”

Yahoo Chat .”Hi, look at my profile and lets trade pics” spam bot link farm, full of  regulars who do not like new people. All of the regulars have programs to kick other users out of the room, especially if the user is prettier, wittier or cooler than them. The regulars do not kick out the spam bots. This is the epitome of what everyone ever perceived a chatroom to be. It is not what chatrooms really were.

Twitter is like the Mood and status updates of MySpace. Difference is, the place is a farm of spam, get rich quick and stick it to the man. I have lost a bit of interest in this place also. It seems Twitter has taken another route since it became mainstream. It is not quite what it looked like it would be. Yes, it is a great place for all of  your followers to get a notice at one time about what you are doing or about to do or about to be or just left. Yes, that makes it awesome. Especially if you are ,for examlpe, a musician and no one knows when your show is going to happen. Musicians miss that point. Some think it would be cheesy so they refuse to connect at all; and that makes them crappy and not heart effort musicians. If it ain’t from the heart, it ain’t music.

I truly miss MSN chatrooms. That was really Social Networking. You used to be able to join a chatroom and exchange wit and banter with with up to 50 people per room. The rooms were separated into many categories. Most were separated by location, like city and state. The city chats were always full to the max of 50 people. The overflow rooms were always full of up to 50 people. The chat rolled at such a fast pace, your mind stayed well exercised. I feel as if I am getting slower by the day because there just is nothing that fast paced left to do. I can’t leave one post and wait 6 days for someone to reply to it. It’s just way to slow.

MSN says they dropped the program because it was not that big of a money maker. They have to be kidding. They had rotating banners in every single chat. With 50 people in each room, and there being over 200 main rooms, they had some serious revenue flowing in. I think they tried so hard to be like Google or to beat Google, they missed out on what was really working for them. I swear, just a little bit of innovation for their chatrooms, and they could have potentially kept MySpace and Facebook from ever coming out of the ground. Heck, those places didn’t rise well and established until the chatters had nowhere else to go. Facebook was around for at least three years that MSN still had chatrooms. Now look at the place.