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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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MySpace: Now not quite as ugly

Update: I was a lit­tle too quick hit­ting the “Pub­lish” but­ton, and for­got to include a link to my pro­file (duh). The text has now been updated, or you can go directly there »

If you’ve ever had a con­ver­sa­tion with me about MySpace, you know how I despise it with a pas­sion unequaled by pos­si­bly any­one else on the planet. OK, maybe not any­one else, but cer­tainly any­one who has a MySpace account. Except Mike D., he hates it more than I do (but for the same reasons).

Most of that hatred comes from its piss-poor (tech­ni­cal term) user inter­face design, which doesn’t seem to be (and never has been) a pri­or­ity for Tom and pals. It’s been described as “ghetto design” by some, and that’s just the crap you can see on the sur­face (web stan­dards junkies, like me, cringe when look­ing at the source code, but enough about my level of über-geekness…).

I was really plan­ning to dig into the bow­els of the pro­file code myself, to see what could be done, but after wast­ing half a day on it ear­lier in the year, I put the project on the back burner. This week, I decided I’d had enough, and with the help of Mike D’s “Extreme Makeover: MySpace Edi­tion” kit (my name), and a few min­utes in Pho­to­shop, my pro­file page is now sport­ing a new, exfo­li­ated skin (mmm, smells like oranges…).

And if any of you know Rupert Mur­doch, put him in touch with me, I have a plan to help him “fix” MySpace, and save some money, with­out alien­at­ing his pre­cious users…

This item was posted by Dan Rubin on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

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17 comments on “MySpace: Now not quite as ugly”

  1. Posted by Joshua Bryant on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    How bout a link?

  2. Posted by Dan Rubin on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Thanks for catch­ing my stu­pid­ity Joshua, post updated :)

  3. Posted by Joshua Bryant on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Sweet, looks nice. Way to match it to your blog, I did the same thing with mine.

    Nice work!

  4. Posted by Jeff Croft on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Damn, nice job man. Love the MP3s, too. Great singing, and the player is even pretty sexy.

  5. Posted by Wade Winningham on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    I sup­pose you’ll be shut­ting down all your email accounts now and exclu­sively using MySpace now. I’d like to know when “Rubin Sings Sina­tra” will be out?

  6. Posted by Dan Rubin on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    @ Joshua: Nice job, I can’t wait to see more design­ers on MySpace putting Mike’s tem­plate to good use…

    @ Jeff: Aww, you’re just say­ing that because we’re writ­ing a book together ;)

    @ Wade: Well, of course, isn’t that the new hip thing to do? And I’ll have a CD out as soon as some­one is ready to foot the bill ;)

  7. Posted by Will Norris on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Oh come on Dan, music auto­mat­i­cally play­ing when the page loads? I would expect that from the 12 year old script kid­dies that make up 95% of the MySpace pop­u­la­tion, but not from you. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great and I actu­ally like the music (didn’t know you were a musi­cian, just read your blog for the design stuff), but I always get offended when web­sites push their music onto me with­out ask­ing first. What, are they just assum­ing that I’m not already play­ing my own music and want to lis­ten to their trash?

    Just my two cents… again, great design though.

  8. Posted by Dan Rubin on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    @ Will: But that’s part of the “MySpace User Expe­ri­ence Inter­face Expe­ri­ence™” — why would you want to miss out on that? :)

    And we all have to indulge the “12 year old script kid“inside us every once in a while, it’s actu­ally quite lib­er­at­ing… that said, I’ll think about turn­ing off the auto-play. Either that, or I’ll have to con­vince every designer on MySpace to put that MP3 player on their pro­file and play my songs :P

  9. Posted by Mike D. on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Nice look­ing page! Good use of the Kit!

    On another note, when­ever I hear that song, I think of the toi­let bowl cleaner com­mer­cial with the spoof “I’ve Got You, Under My Rim.”

  10. Posted by Jina Bolton on Sunday, July 30th, 2006.

    Dan, gimme some mp3s and I’ll add your songs to my player!

    And Will.… I hear ya, I feel the same… but this is Myspace… and while I don’t like to hear someone’s trash, Dan’s myspace is about him, and his music is him… and gives you a more in-depth pic­ture of who he is.

    So nah. ;)

  11. Posted by Kevin on Monday, July 31st, 2006.

    Nice.

  12. Posted by Steven Ametjan on Monday, July 31st, 2006.

    Most of that hatred comes from its piss-poor (tech­ni­cal term) user inter­face design, which doesn’t seem to be (and never has been) a pri­or­ity for Tom and pals.

    I take offense to that state­ment as while I was there proper design, usabil­ity, and acces­si­bil­ity were my utmost pri­or­i­ties. But I will agree that the rest of the peo­ple there didn’t care, and had no clue about those issues. All they cared about was get­ting things done as quickly as pos­si­ble, and mak­ing it feel as home­grown as possible.

  13. Posted by Matthew Anderson on Monday, July 31st, 2006.

    I love it, Dan. The irony of it is almost unbear­able. I for one, love the Sina­tra auto-load. Def­i­nitely keep that! Reminds me, next time we see each other, we’ve got to set aside some a cap­pella time. I know quite a few jazz standards.

  14. Posted by Chris Griffin on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006.

    OMFG DAN RUBIN YOU ARE SO AWESOME DESIGNER.….WILL YOU BE MY MYSPACE FREND?!?!?!?!

    I kid, no but really will you be my myspace friend?

  15. Posted by Colly on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006.

    Blimey. Its like find­ing a dia­mond in a big stink­ing pile of shit. Good work. Mur­doch needs to get on the blower, and fast…

  16. Posted by Jonas on Saturday, August 26th, 2006.

    Nice…

    But what I really want to know is if you tran­scribed the “It had to be you” arrange­ment your­self, or if it’s avail­able as midi file somewhere?

    Great singing!

  17. Posted by Almanca tercüman on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008.

    I sup­pose you’ll be shut­ting down all your email accounts now and exclu­sively using MySpace now..