i started this blog about about 16 months ago.
at that same time my daughter told me i should be on myspace, not blogger.
"You can blog on myspace too."
I was familiar with myspace because my kids are in a band -- so i knew it was a big place for music fans. and sluts. don't forget the sluts.
i wasn't feeling very enthused about the idea of myspace. it certainly didn't seem the place for books and writers, but my daughter grabbed my laptop and got me started. she put up my bookcovers and filled everything in.
i had one FRIENDS (tom, my darling) for several days. Maybe even a couple of weeks.
then i got a friend request.
I immediately called my daughter and asked her what to do. accept? decline? it was too much for me. all she could say was do whatever you want. big help. she told me i could always delete the friend later if things got weird. why would i want to put up a site, chum for "friends" then delete the person if he got weird? why send out the invitation to begin with? does any of this make sense? NO!
a second request. a second frantic call to my daughter. I read the bio over the phone. what do you think? should i? shouldn't i?
i ended up telling some actual friends about myspace, and they joined. suddenly i had 8 friends. and i found some of my favorite bands. and then young readers starting finding me. but there weren't many other writers. that was cool with me because i found myspace kind of frantic and the pages load slowly or don't load at all. but then WTF? an explosion of writers and books.
it will be interesting to see what happens. i'm a big music person, and i kind of like the combination of books and music at myspace. and it's fun to suddenly see so many familiar names and faces.
now i'm a pro. i lean back in my chair, one finger: accept, accept.
decline, whore. decline, perv.
have you seen this?
my death space
i guess i should also put up my link, but i really don't do much over there:
anne's myspace
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37 comments:
I can totally see you calling up your daughter. *laughs* Yes, now you're a pro! I like your new page change too!
whoa, I'd never seen my death space. Totally trippy.
As a comedian, myspace is a great tool. I'm able to list all my gigs. And I'm happy to be one of your MySpace friends.
kelly: :D i finally figured out how to do the background. i think it looks less frantic now.
Jer: it is a great tool for comedians. I'm so sorry i didn't mention that. (kicking myself) i tend to include the comedians with the writers, which they are. although i think comedians came along maybe a year before the book peeps. i love having you and kelly as myspace buddies. :)
I'm not sure what I think of MySpace. I've been resisting it so far.
I'm with you Sandra. I got sucked into blogging and am trying to stay FAAAAAR from Myspace.
sandra, i really think of it as a novelty. i'm unconvinced it has any real purpose for writers other than just being fun.
tami: it might not appeal to you. i've been on myspace for almost a year and a half and hardly ever go there. it never clicked for me the way blogging did.
I haven't check out much of MySpace. Mostly because it's filled with porn, musicians and children.
And I hate children.
My Death Space, though. Now that has just piqued my fascination level to new heights. I'll be spending more than a few morbid hours there, that's for sure.
LOL -- stephen, i thought you might enjoy that.
i can't get over how many of them have been shot.
most deaths are:
gunshot
suicide
car accident -- often alcohol related
The ones that I found disturbing were the large number of soldiers killed by IEDs in Iraq.
And my god, there are a lot of drownings and drug overdoses. Don't these people know to stay away from the white powder drugs?
Myspace has taken on such a negative conotation lately, no wonder it's exploding (people being people and wanting to get into anything with a "bad" reputation). I've always avoided it too - I'll stick with all of my blogs, thankyouverymuch.
Like you, Anne, my daughter got me hooked up with myspace about the same time you did or shortly thereafter. She told me it would be a good place for me to meet other people with an interest in music and writing.
She got on my laptop and before you could say, "Hey Jude," she had The Beatles picture up, helped me with my profile, and I was off and running. For a long time I had two friends, automatic Tom and my daughter.
What is funny is I did the same thing you did when I got my first actual friend request. I called my daughter at college and asked her what I should do.
I overheard her laughing and saying to her roommate, "OMG, Dad is calling me because he got a friend request on myspace and now he's flippin out."
With experience I've also gotten pretty good with the "accept and "decline" button.
I'm immediately suspicious of anyone who requests to be my friend when they already have 145,679 friends!
I like having you, Kelly, and Jer as myspace friends. :)
My Death Space, while interesting, is too depressing.
bailey: you have so much going on in your life right now -- i can where myspace would be an annoyance and not what you're wanting out of the internet.
jeff: LOL!!
our myspace experience seems almost identical. that is SO FUNNY!!
Yeah, I got the depressed vibe from Death Space too, although I felt drawn to read a lot of deaths. Morbid curiosity! ;D
Also, I've actually met writers on myspace I hadn't met by blogging. I've connected with a couple of authors for interviews, and learned about a few reviewers who are open to read my books if I send them arcs. I usually don't PM people but others have done so to me and that's how some of these topics came up.
I was avoiding getting a page too, because all the bad press it gets with kids and peds but I figured why not bring some good to it with fiction and connect with younger readers. Not that I do much good, but you know what I mean. =D
kelly, that's interesting to hear you've connected with other writers. i don't do much with mine page (well, NOTHING with it) and that probably has something to do with my take on it. i pop in and say hi when somebody i know joins, but that's really about it. i'm sure it's what you make of it. i'm just spread too thin right now. i've also always found it frustrating that i can't respond to a comment someone leaves unless i send a PM or comment on their page.
Believe me, I was surprised by the connecting! lol! I guess people get interested because of the interviews i do. Just giving my take. Sometimes I'm too chatty. =D
Whenever I view a mySpace page, it seems to look chaotic and confusing. Which makes me think I must be a cranky old man. "We I was a boy, we didn't have interweb pages...!"
Plus, for me, I think the last thing I need is one more thing to keep track of.
(...wanders off to reminisce about the days before 'puters.)
bill, it IS chaotic and confusing!!
You're much more hip than I am.
Myspace kind of freaks me out. What primary purpose does it serve? Do you just drop by and make a random comment and move on?
jason... hip? no, that's not it. :D
jason, that reminds me of something my kids used to hear a lot:
"Guess Grandma's just not hep enough for you."
i do like the laid-back nature of myspace. i don't have to take as many good-behavior pills over there.
I go to MySpace to find out what my son is doing. He's a teenager and therefore, by the laws of nature, cannot talk to me personally.
I haven't gotten into the My Space thing yet. I think it would be just another time suck away from writing, and lord knows I have enough of those already with blogs.
I don't like myspace all that much. It's glitchy and not very user friendly, but I can see why people like it so much. It's a cool concept with some poor web design.
I think I dislike it so much because its search function sucks and if you use a browser like firefox and you open multiple pages in your tabs, you get a lovely cachophony of everyone's musical self-representations.
I have an account there. Anne, aren't you and I friends there? I have any communications go to a separate email and I never visit because the place is...well...creepy.
elizabeth: LOL! when i go there, i feel i'm accidentally spying on my kids. i don't like that.
jaye: yes, it is another time suck!
emeraldcite: nice to see you again. :) i can't even get myspace to work with firefox. i have to use safari, and then it will often lock up and i have to force quit. THAT'S time consuming! :D
i always thought it was my computer. i often can't even check out a bio because the page simply won't load. but i have noticed it doesn't seem as glitchy recently.
m.g. -- are we friends? LOL!!! shows how much i use the place.
I was on vacation at Disney. My first time. It was pretty fun, although I spent most of my time pushing my wife around.
Not physically, in a wheelchair. She's at eight and a half months so it was rough going in the heat, humidity, rain, and twelve hour days.
It was pretty cool, though.
Anyway, I hate when you have to log into myspace to view pictures, but it doesn't return to the page you were looking at...
I like the concept, hate the design. It could be so much cooler with a little work.
i thought that baby was coming soon -- and actually thought maybe he/she was already here.
favorite disneyworld ride: tower of terror. i love that thing!
We're due August. We found out the day before we left for vacation that it'll be a boy. We're going with Alexander Paul as the name. Paul is after my grandfather who is very dear to my heart.
I didn't go on the tower of terror, but my seven-year-old daughter did. She loved it. She also loved the Rockin' Rollercoaster.
I get panicky with locking shoulder restraints and the like.
i LOVE that name. my son's middle name is alexander.
a friend in sweden just named her baby elvira. they don't know about elvira there. :D we call her the little vampire.
lol! elvira is a great name.
Boy names are difficult, so we wanted one that had a good history, wasn't as common as Matthew (it's not a bad name, it's just that I hated being Matt #4 in my classes growing up) and it had some good nickname options.
brianna--
that's good to know!
and about that tarot reading....
i haven't forgotten. ;)
I have often described myspace as "an overblown 'hot or not'." You have to have seen Hot or Not to know what I mean, but... well, picture a site devoted to posting your picture and asking strangers to rate your looks.
If it isn't already obvious, I think myspace is pretty lame, lol! That said, I do have a myspace account, I post some of my blog stuff there, and I participate in some of the myspace groups.
It is an easy interface on the surface. That helps with the popularity --you don't have to know anything about web design to have a page and some pictures. But image is everything. That's why I think it's not a good fit for writers. At least up til now, MOST writers have been able to depend upon their actual writing for fame, unlike musicians. For musicians, you just can't be famous anymore without a video, and the better people think you look, the more you'll sell.
Thank goodness all the writers I know are so damned beautiful! :)
One thing I have enjoyed about myspace is the "groups." I'm an atheist living in the buckle of the bible belt. It's a relief to be able to chat with a reliably non-religious group, just for a chance. But myspace is dominated by the 25s and under, and as a result... sometimes the conversation is decidedly... too young, and I lose interest.
Argh, "just for a change."
And I wonder if things like myspace are a sign of what's to come for writers and other like artists, who have not previously been known by their own faces?
hah -- i've seen hot or not. funny, cruel, disturbing. bizarre.
myspace can be a little like that.
i'm actually liking myspace more now with the addition of more writers simply because it begins to make more sense to me - and certainly moves it out of the hot or not.
and yeah, the whole looks thing is disturbing. i feel so sorry for bands who are amazing but don't have the face.
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