Review: Myspace

So the other day, as I was stalking Taylor Swift's personal social profiles for news (which is perfectly normal behaviour, mind you), I decided to visit her Myspace page. Remember that? Yes, where most new artists start out, adding their music to their profiles, creating a fanbase, etc. The one with quite an ordinary, blue homepage which has the latest news from the music industry, where your own page has a typically NING type of feel with your blog posts, Top Friends, all your top five songs, albums and movies, a comment wall; and, quite blatantly, a certified death wish.

Well, it's gone.

No, not Myspace. Just the ordinarynessness. I didn't take their emails about the change seriously when they had sent them a few months ago, and I'm glad I didn't. It was a wonderful surprise when I did see the change. Apparently Taylor took their emails seriously though; although she didn't add the entire RED album onto her page, she updated her profile picture, cover page (yes, cover page), as well as her bio. Unfortunately it's not the personal message that she usually has up, but pretty much something that would have been written by her agent.

Firstly, Myspace is white! Seriously, the profile pages pretty much have a white palette. I quite like it; the white gives the page a rather... clean finish. The profile set up has also changed completely. And by completely, I mean it's gone 90 degrees anti-clockwise. You now have to scroll to the right to see the entire page (this is for the entire site). There is now a cover page facility and, unlike Facebook, if you choose not to put a cover page, Myspace puts a cover for you, mostly landscapes, which change every time you refresh the page.

When I first signed up for a Myspace account, back in 2008, once you chose a username/url extension, you could never ever NEVEREVEREVEREVEREVER change it and Myspace made that very clear when you chose your username/url extension. It appears that they have changed their policy (probably in an attempt to revive themselves), because I successfully changed my extension from harrypotternutter  to mishfics. Not that I don't like Harry Potter anymore - how dare you even think such a thing - I just needed to streamline all my social networks and using one username makes things easier. I still retain the title of the Harry Potter Nutter.

There are, naturally, a few things I don't like about the new Myspace. Firstly, I had absolutely NO idea how to locate my settings page, library or anything other than my profile page. Everything, as I later learned, is located on the Myspace homepage, which makes profile editing a little frustrating. Another thing, I couldn't figure out how to change my bio or likes, etc, as it wasn't under settings. I eventually managed to edit mine by going to Taylor's bio and looking at the url. But really, I shouldn't have needed to do that. They could have included these things in their introductory video or setup process after logging in. Also, what happened to the blog?

I suppose with regard to anything new and computer related, the best thing to do is to play around and figure out things, which is what I've been doing and it's been fun. Final verdict: I think Myspace is on the right track to becoming one of the social network kings it once was. They just need to... get out there more, I guess.

I think I overslept

For the past week, I've spent every second waking hour sleeping (first waking hour is for Fajr, btw). Exams are finally over and, finally, I can read more, sleep more, exercise more, write more and blog more. Right? Wrong, I've been spending most of my time oversleeping to the extent that I'm so tired when I wake up and all I look forward to is going to sleep. Not to mention all the post-exam cleaning up, those mini heart-attacks whilst opening up the campus site to see my marks and projects. Yes, I still have campus work. So much for a holiday.

I do have a list of things I would like to do during this one month holiday, though. And I intend on crossing off at least half the things on that list. One of those include learning the Glee cover of Papa don't Preach on guitar. I found this video tutorial that makes it quite easy to learn, so I'll be using that to help me.

In other news, Kim And Kanye have named their daughter North West. And, of course, it is currently a World Trend on Twitter. And, of course, the first thing any logical person would think is that everyone is talking about the South Africa province, right? RIGHT?? I guess, though, that the parents looked at their baby and thought 'YOLO'. Speaking of the couple, a friend of mine posted this on Facebook. I checked on Twitter if it was legit, but I couldn't find the post. So, assuming that this is in fact a photoshopped item, hats off to the person who made this.