Blogasm says January 30th is Delete Your MySpace Day

Many thanks once again to Mashable for showing the way to this topic....

I have never been a huge fan of MySpace. When I was first hipped to it's existence it was still a place for bands to spread the word about new tunes and shows. It was a networking tool for fans of music to connect with the under served in the music marketplace. Being as I had left the music making business and was just in the music spinning business I created a MySpace account with the hopes of connecting to some old musician friends and scoping out some undiscovered gems. It was a nice place to stop by every now and then to pick up messages from artists and I even found some new favorites. And then it became a big deal. Slowly..nope it was like a wildfire. It grew by leaps and bounds. When I launched the blog I created a MySpace page for it. It exploded. Pretty soon there was a crack down. What had previously been a pretty cool place suddenly had a lot of new rules. You can post this but not that. Then the HTML lockdown. There were always ads but they became more obnoxious. They were EVERYWHERE! Then came the bots. Useless friend requests and spam comments on a magnitude I never imagined. It got so bad that I only visited the MySpace page once a week to clean out the shit that had built up. Then came Rupert Murdoch's money and it all went to hell in a big expensive hand basket. Nowadays I largely ignore the blog account stopping in once a month or so to delete 90% of the bot requests and I NEVER EVER read comments. My personal account was cropped back to just a very few friends and locked down. Basically MySpace is a "necessary evil" in my world now.

Well that's nothing compared to Simon Owens over at Blogasms feelings toward MySpace. Bloggasm is a blog that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. Simon has had it and he intends to delete his MySpace account with all 15 of his friends and he wants all of us to join him...en masse...on January 30th...to send a message to MySpace, and I assume by proxy to Facebook, LinkedIn and the myriad other copycats that we've all had enough of the ass-hattery. Here's Simon's litmus test for considering a January 30th deletion of your account....(from Bloggasm)

1. You rarely log in to Myspace except to delete spam friend requests from nude webcam girls.

2. You spend five minutes writing a wall post only to hit an error message when you try to post it because of all the website glitches.

3. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east.

4. You visit someone’s Myspace profile only to suddenly have music start blasting out of your speakers. Bonus points if it happens to you while you’re at work.

5. You have to make redundant clicks to perform simple tasks because Myspace keeps taking you to advertisement pages where you have to click on “return to myspace profile” in order to continue what you’re doing.

6. You visit someone’s profile only to have your eyes bleed because of terrible page layout with non-matching designs and font colors.

7. Your experience is hindered because of intrusive banner ads that either talk to you or try to reach out and block your view of what you’re trying to look at.

8. You read yet another news account about how some child predator using Myspace has abducted a little girl or that some hoax myspace account has caused a teenager to commit suicide.

9. You’re frustrated with the fact that Myspace doesn’t allow you to post your contact info, meaning to contact someone you can only use Myspace’s glitchy Instant Messenger, message/email system, or wall commenting.

10. You’re tired of seeing Tom stare out at you from millions of friends lists and just wish he would change his fucking profile picture.

Have any of these things happened to you? Well you’re the perfect candidate for Myspace deletion. Join me on Wednesday, January 30th by deleting your Myspace account. You won’t regret it!

I'm not sure what I am going to do. I DEFINITELY qualify for account deletion based on the above criteria, but am I willing to actually forgo MySpace. That's a tough one. Anyway now YOU have something to think about. Will you join Simon? Are you sick of MySpace and the piece of crap that it has become? What will you do on January 30th:?