I can't bring myself to open myspace. It makes my skin crawl.

I've been mulling whether I should have a MySpace page for my book, but it's hypocritical since I slam it in said book.

No, no, not hypocritical. Ironic!

What Liese said! I really really think you should. There's definitely an audience there.

Allyson, I hope you get one. You can always delete it, if it becomes too much trouble, but this is your first time publishing, and there are a lot of fans on MySpace, because there are a lot of actors (and musicians, and comedians, and indie filmmakers, and you get the picture) on MySpace. It's a whole new place to promote, and promotion is part of what MySpace is there for.

Plus, isn't it owned by Fox now? More irony!

Myspace is a great publicity tool, and it's also quite handy in terms of social networking with people you know due to the sheer size of it (and the fact it links in things like schools and employment records). Several of the people I used to work with and go to school with have contacted me on it.

That said, the user interface is pretty rubbish in my humble opinion, and the focus on one on one interaction instead of community interaction is not something I'm used to.

I can understand why the Livejournal generation tend to hate it, which includes my girlfriend. That said, Myspace is a mish mash of various different sites which have come before it, but it's done it in a very accessible way - it's like, what, the 2nd most used site on the internet now?

Can't anyone convince NF to switch to a less adolescent form of blogging?

That wouldn't really be smart for him, I suspect. He's doing it for visibility, and Myspace gives you the best visibilty online at the moment.

Nathan worked and is friendly with James Gunn and Jenna Fischer. They have pages at MySpace, and encouraged him to join. There were a lot of impersonators on MySpace, and by adding his own account (and having James Gunn confirm it really was Nathan), it pulled the rug out from under the impersonators' feet.

MySpace is essentially Buffistas, is the Bronze, is LJ. It is what you make it.

I don't like the interface much and don't like the looks of it. I don't like all the spam, and pronishness of it, but not only can you control who you add as a friend, you can control who adds you as a friend. You don't have to have a cleavage shot for your user picture. You can not add music, or set up your own music so it doesn't auto-play.

I'm pretty sure you can set up your profile so you don't automatically hear someone else's music, unless you choose to. You can set up your profile so people can't leave you HTML comments (which does away with a lot of the garbage).

I prefer regular blogging platforms, but I can see why it might be intimidating to set one up, particularly for someone who doesn't spend a lot of time online.