Bloggasm

Why on earth is MSNBC teaming up with Myspace? Didn’t they get the memo that Myspace is dead?

This is my first Sunday that I have almost completely to myself (most weekends I travel to see my girlfriend an hour away) and I’ve taken the opportunity to do some house cleaning, both figuratively and literally. Part of that house cleaning involves shooing these media-related links out the door.

1. Have you ever wondered the difference between marketing, advertising, PR, and branding? Well, now you have this hilarious illustration to spell it out for you.

2. For weeks now, Tor Books has been giving away free ebooks of its print titles. Every week a new ebook is sent out to their mailing list. What’s most interesting (to me) about these mailings is that some of the authors are posting updates on their book sales and how giving away free ebooks affected their print sales. Tobias Buckell, whose novel Crystal Rain was recently given away in the mailing, posts graphs that show a recent spike in sales after the giveaway.

3. On a slightly related note, remember how Google has completely fucked me over in its recent indexing? Well, to find my Bloggasm article linked above about Tor’s ebooks, I Googled the words “Bloggasm” and “tor books” assuming that that post would come up first. I ended up having to skip through two or three pages of search results before I found it. Fucking ridiculous. And you know what showed up first in the search results before the actual article? All the dozens of blog posts that linked to the article.

4. This article makes me extremely jealous. It’s about a newspaper media critic who took a buyout and now runs a media website full time. My pipe dreams have become this guy’s reality.

5. More and more social networking scandals are breaking every week, these sites are likely going to create a whole new field of study for sociologists. This week’s scandal comes to us via New York, an article about school systems struggling to respond to libelous teacher attacks on Facebook.

6. Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald tries his hand at satire by summarizing a recent AP profile on Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

(Updated below)

Tor Books, a major science fiction and fantasy publisher, announced recently that it would offer free weekly ebooks of its print titles if you sign up for its email newsletter. But this is just part of a larger online expansion that will include social networking and the publication of original short fiction and nonfiction, sources familiar with the project told me.

Two sources who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said that it’s intended to be a “go-to site, a central community” for science fiction and fantasy fans. A few authors have already been approached to submit original short fiction to be published online. Tor is paying upwards of 25 cents per word for these stories and right now is only dealing with solicited authors.

According to one of the sources, this website will act in part as a form of branding and promotion for Tor book titles, “with an eye towards leveraging traffic into advertising revenues, down the road.” The project is being largely organized by Patrick Nielson Hayden, a senior editor at Tor.

So far the details of this site have remained a secret, hence why the sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an email on Friday, Nielsen Hayden confirmed many of these facts.

“Yes, it will involve lightweight ’social networking’ features, although I don’t think those will be the core value proposition of the site,” he said. “We’re not going into competition with Facebook.”

The editor described the site as “a platform for original short SF and fantasy, by both Tor authors and non-Tor authors.”

As for those free ebooks?

“The free digital books are exactly what we say they are: an inducement to get people to pre-register as users and allow us to send them emailed progress reports,” Nielsen Hayden said. “The book-length freebies are a temporary program slated to run from now until when we launch. Although the site will be ‘giving away’ a lot of content–indeed, all of its content, as we don’t anticipate any part of it being DRMed or paywalled–the core of the site will not be built around a program of free novel giveaways. That said, we reserve the right to give away free digital books any time we think it’s a good idea to do so. (With the cooperation and consent of their authors, naturally.)”

He confirmed that the site would be functional in approximately three months, “but any such estimate has a large margin of error.”

Ebooks slated for free publication include Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, and Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold.

In an article published last week titled “The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?” I predicted that many companies would launch online publications to act as a form of branding for their products. I think this project with Tor supports my theory.

UPDATE: Irene Gallo, an Art director for Tor, writes:

I will add that the commissioned fiction will be accompanied by commissioned artwork and we are working gallery section that will contain portfolios for 100 artists. This wont be the kind of peer-to-peer workshop site that ConceptArt.org and CgSociety is, but it will be a place for fans and art directors to get a taste of an artist’s work and then link into the artists’ sites.

ABC News’s website has a new article up titled “Is MySpace Over?” I’m quoted a few times in the article.

The day has finally arrived. Last Sunday I declared January 30th to be International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.

Many of the people who linked and commented on my post agreed with me whole-heartedly: Myspace sucks. And to drive that message home, we’re finally disposing of our useless profile pages all together on one day.

So if you’ve deleted your Myspace page today, tell us about your experience in the comments section. Several people have emailed me over the last few days to tell me that they tried to delete their profiles only for the confirmation email never to be sent. If this happens to you, it’s a serious issue that Myspace needs to address. Please let us know about it.

If anyone needs to contact me about this day, you can email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for more information.

Below is a list of steps for you to delete your profile. I already tried them on my own myspace page. Supposedly Myspace is supposed to delete it within 48 hours. We’ll see if that happens.

Now, the steps:

1. Log in at Myspace.com

2. Click on “account settings” next to your profile picture

3. Click on the “cancel account” link at the bottom of the screen

4. On this screen it tells you to confirm your cancellation. It also provides you a box to explain why you’re canceling your account. To really drive home the message, you should put “Because it’s International Delete Your Myspace Account Day” as your reason. That will let them know that you’re deleting the account because of the cause.

5. You should receive an email that will allow you to “confirm” (hey, didn’t I already “confirm” it like two clicks ago? Myspace sure doesn’t want me to leave) your cancellation. After you’ve once again confirmed it, it tells you to give it 48 hours to complete the cancellation.

6. If your profile doesn’t disappear in 48 hours, raise bloody hell.

Good luck everyone! Happy cancellation!

–Simon

UPDATE: New Matilda has published a feature article about the event.

UPDATE 2: Here’s a video clip from one television news station that covered the event. Here is the story done by the Washington Post.

UPDATE 3: Another TV news station does a report about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. (The video is on the righthand side)

UPDATE 4: News.com, the publication that had the response from the Myspace spokeswoman, has published a follow-up article after interviewing me. It includes an additional non-response from Myspace.

UPDATE: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day is finally here!

That’s it, I’ve had it. After months of only visiting my myspace profile in order to delete spam friend requests from half-nude women, I’ve reached the end of the line.

The other day I received an email from Myspace announcing something semi-relevant: “One of your friends is having a birthday this week.”

Intrigued for once, I actually opened the email to find out who was having a birthday, and was met with this:

Visit Myspace to find out who? No, I’m not going to fucking visit Myspace to find out who, there’s absolutely no reason why I should have to visit the website, wait for it to load because of the excessive banner ads, and then log in just so I can find out who is having a birthday. If you’re going to take the time and energy to spam my inbox with the message, then you can tell me in the email itself whose birthday it is.

I’ve been thinking about deleting my Myspace account almost since the day I got it but always opted out of doing so because of the few friends I have who don’t have Facebook accounts. But by remaining on Myspace, I realize, I’m becoming an enabler. I’m giving those friends no reason to switch over from Myspace by giving them access to my Myspace profile.

But rather than deleting my account right away, I’m going to hold off until January 30th so that other people have time to join me. I’d love to see a large number of people delete their accounts all at once in order to send Myspace a message: your website sucks.

So, if you’re reading this and you’ve experienced any of the things on the list below, your account may be in need of deletion:

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!

UPDATE: A commenter was kind enough to create a facebook group devoted to International Delete Your Myspace Account Day.

UPDATE 2: A Myspace spokeswoman has responded to International Delete Your Myspace Account Day.

UPDATE 3: If any journalists or bloggers would like to interview me about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day, please email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for additional contact info.

1. The greatest science fiction porn of all time

2. I’ve heard of elaborate Facebook pranks, and I’ve reported on some here, but I think if you manage to trick the entire French media into believing your prank then you get to take home the gold medal.

3. I use Google as much as the next person, but let’s face it, their algorithm has some serious flaws.

4. A former editor for The New Republic has died. Luckily for him, he stopped working there when the magazine still had some credibility.

5. Why you shouldn’t exercise to indie rock

6. When I heard that The Virginia Pilot was for sale (Disclaimer: I work for a competing newspaper), the last thing I was expecting was for Pat “700 club” Robertson to consider buying it.

7. Some interesting Twitter messages that have emerged from the presidential press bus.

8. The blogosphere increases its influence on the 2008 presidential election.