I have to admit that I just didn't get into MySpace at all. I guess that's because I'm 35 and don't have a band or something.

Every once in a while, a MySpace page comes up in search. I also get requests to use my desktop wallpaper backgrounds as MySpace backgrounds (something I never agree to). Some folks have deep-linked to my wallpaper, but they occasionally get more interesting backgrounds on their site than they originally picked :P

Yesterday, my wife wanted to show me the page for a person she went to school with who is now a DJ at a local station. She didn't know his URL, so she had to traverse a few sites to get to him.

Yuck.

It seems that most myspace pages I have seen break all sorts of design rules, and not in a good way. They're even worse than the original FrontPage web sites from the early 90's, far worse even than the old Angelfire and Geocities sites where folks who are now on MySpace used to gravitate to.

• Pages with backgrounds so busy you can't possibly read the text
• Pages with backgrounds with hard edges
• Pages that wear out your scrolling finger because the page is just so long
• I have FIOS for Business at my house, and there are MySpace pages that have so many images and streaming content that they take forever to download. I'd hate to try those on DSL, forget dial up.
• Complete lack of focus (ok, if you look at this like they are the modern version of the Jr High School locker door then you can forgive this)
• The absolute worst spelling on the internet (no excuse for this, no matter how old or young you are - been there, made that mistake)
• Pages with enough personal information to make a stalker happy

You have to grant a certain amount of slack given the ages of the people involved, but these sites are just truly terrible. I'm not a religious person, but I really hope that the MySpace users evolve past this design and don't take these design aesthetics with them into college and the real world.

Take it from someone who has been there: internet content remains seemingly forever (or long enough to embarass you), and will be back to haunt you someday :)

[PS: Before anyone points out that 1991 wasn't that long ago, keep in mind that it was before "The Web", real search engines (except archie, WAIS, and gopher - sort of), spell-checkers available on the same terminal you used to access the internet, and anything much better than newsgroups, muds, and downloadable MOD/midi files. It was also before any commercial involvement in the internet. ]