The MySpace Effect
For those of you who may have tried to access the blog via the actual webpage versus your trusty newsreader, you would have received an Error 500 page, which is part of a larger story. Nonetheless, it’s fixed! So the site is up and running normally as it should be.
Last month, I received an automated bandwidth response from the web server saying that I had eaten through 80% of my allowable traffic. I took it as a happy surprise because it would ultimately mean more visitors. I added bandwidth only to receive the same message again yesterday - this time 10 days earlier in the month than last time. Alas, both AwStats and Google Analytics confirmed that there was no spike in users, no Digg effect, and no worm or virus plaguing the site. So I was perplexed.
I did some forensic accounting (my new favorite job description I read about in the NY Times) of what the heck was up with the site. If I didn’t suddenly have an extra 10,000 visitors, I should have had more than enough bandwidth to cover my arse. Suddenly at the bottom of my referer list I noticed I was getting a lot of traffic from MySpace. It’s increasingly odd given I have absolutely no presence/profile/whatever on MySpace. So I managed to track the MySpace traffic coming from 4 different users in particular. They seem to be in some rap/punk/experimental word music group, and no, I will not be linking their profiles to this post as I shortly learned that most of the lyrics were racist anthems
I visited their respective MySpace pages to be confronted with the predominant default ugliness of most MySpace profiles to discover that some of the desktops I had published here, for offline use, were hotlinked as the backgrounds on these 4 users’ profiles. Thus, I ended up burning 60% of my bandwidth with traffic I never saw. For smaller companies such as this one, I still haven’t made up my mind if MySpace makes our business better off or is detrimental to much of the web (aside from the political and cultural ugliness of these respective users). Nonetheless, I managed to stave off all of the hotlinking using cPanel and thank you to all of you who wrote in to inform me of the problems.
More importantly, I’m curious on what your thoughts are on MySpace. Like it or hate it, I would love to know. So sound off.
Yikes! Sounds like your “forensic accounting” work paid off. Isn’t it amazing what people will do online?!?
As far as MySpace goes, I’ve only heard bad things about it. I don’t use it myself, and don’t plan to. I think it’ll eventually fade away like most of the social networking sites.
I will add that the hotlinking issue that you ran into isn’t isolated to MySpace users. I had a client a few years ago whose site was essentially brought to its knees because a competitor had hotlinked to product photos on their site.
In any case, I’m glad you’re back online!
Thanks for concern. It’s pretty amazing to see the spread of some bad design ideas spreading like wildfire because of MySpace. It’s not MySpace’s fault necessarily. GeoCities has never won any major design awards either.
I feel pretty mixed up about Myspace.
I mean, I have a profile. People read it more than they ever read my website. I still haven’t figured out if they care though.
Social networking with likeminded people is one thing, random drunken myspace profile views are another.
Anyway, I stopped by because of Taft. Lookin’ good. I would love to design a site with it but the font is just too crazy for non-native speakers to comprehend. Have you thought about offering something more traditional?
Yep.
-johnny
I think it’s a little scary that people may read your profile more than the actual site you set up. From the business side, thats a testament to MySpace, but from the perspective of advancing the way we work on the web and everything under that very broad umbrella, I’m still undecided on MySpace.
I do hate bandwidth leeches though
I’m begrudgingly using myspace, jumping on the music bandwagon. I have a conspiracy theory that The creators of myspace teamed up with the creators of Sandi Thom and Lily Allen to promote the usage of myspace as a way to become a celebrity, so that all musicians wanting to be ‘discovered’ think myspace is hte ultimate way to discovery. I like it a little and hate it a lot.
I like it because if everyone is on it, it’s easy to find friends, lyrics of top songs that don’t attack your computer with spyware attempts and pop-ups, and keep in touch with fellow musicians &gigs.I hate it because while It does have its moments, it does nothing a proper website can’t do. It may be free, but so many sites are unreadable, and are hideous. The only editor I could find that was halfway decent was killerkiwi.net, and even that had v. few templates. If there was an adult version (by that, I mean not teenage, not porn-ish) I would cdefinitely use that. But all my friends are on myspace, therefore I must be too. I’m a mature student at university and it gives me a good way to keep up to date with what everyone is up to, and being in the UK, gives me a chance to see what my hometown Texan friends are up to as well.
Sigh. If only there were an alternative …..
There is an alternative, it’s called facebook!
Who’s to say I’m not a member of Facebook?
It’s not that much better…