I was on TechCrunch the other day, reading a post about Myspace, how for many it’s a message system, an alternative to email. I could relate, that’s why I started using Myspace.
About the time people graduate their email is in limbo. Will the .edu address still work, did they change ISPs, are they still checking hotmail, gmail? When you see the little “online now” indicator on Myspace you can be pretty sure that person is checking mail, and it’s a safe bet to reach that person through Myspace.
Initially Myspace had a clear advantage over email, everyone was authorized. You know who’s sending you a message because you see the sender’s profile picture. Spam wasn’t an issue, at first. Now I think my Myspace mailbox is spammed harder than my email box. I get so much spam on Myspace now I don’t bother reading messages without a subject/title.
On to the disadvantages. For a web interface, Myspace is slower with advertising and only shows ten messages per page. And sometimes Myspace says a message was sent when it really wasn’t, if you take a long time to write your message. Whereas my webmail has no ads and I can see about 80 messages per page, and I get panel layout options for viewing titles/contents simultaneously, and (obviously) I can read attachments, search old messages, etc.
Another issue with Myspace is privacy. Do you really need a big corporation reading/archiving your personal thoughts? This becomes more apparent when ads are generated by the contents of the note (and ethnicity of the person) you wrote.
Email spam-filtering has improved in recent years, since Myspace became a hit. These days my email is double-filtered. First filtered by Cloudmark reaching one of my domains, then filtered again by my webmail system, where I can add additional filters to block particularly annoying senders. And I can look at headers which comes in handy.
So Myspace initially had an advantage over email, which is why it’s so popular today. But that advantage is fading.
Ideally, Twitter will drop its 140-character limit on direct messages. Then we could code a webmail-like interface or a Firefox add-on to manage direct messages. Or maybe Norada (my webmail system) will decide it’s a good idea to download/integrate my direct (and &me) messages from Twitter. Then I’d have the advantages of email/webmail combined with the authorization powers of a popular social network.