MySpace

So a year after taking the blogging plunge and largely enjoying it, now I've done the MySpace thing. Just trying to keep current with the young people, doncha know.

I looked at MySpace a few months ago and just didn't like it. The pages were too cluttered, there was too much stuff all over the place and it didn't seem like anything led to anything except more of the same. All the chaos of modern life, dumped onto endless web pages. But it didn't take long to notice that, for bands at least, MySpace has been a godsend, and sometimes there is interesting music to be found. But I still wasn't terribly interested--who wants to help Rupert Murdoch when he doesn't absolutely have to? (Check here for a lovely MySpace-based parody page for Mr. Murdoch.)

But you know. Things change. And since Zen Noir is going to be in theaters starting September 15th, suddenly MySpace--and the grassroots marketing opportunity it represents--became a lot more attractive. Obviously it's just a tiny part of our marketing campaign, but for a smaller movie like ours, the grassroots end will be important. There's already a YouTube page with the trailer, and we'll be putting up a MySpace page for the movie soon.

As a kind of dry run, I set up my own page last week. And yes, the layout is definitely clunky; but it doesn't take long before you realize that you could spend hours just wandering from link to link to link. (Which is of course exactly why Mr. Murdoch was interested--look at all those ads you're absorbing!) But there is an undeniable kick from finding people on there who you'd have never expected. I looked around for a friend from college, found her, then discovered in her Friends section other people I'd known in college. So then I searched for Emerson College alumnae who attended during a certain span of years, and found several other people I knew. I could probably do the same with people from high school, actors in shows I did, and so forth.

(On the other hand, it was more than a little weird to find my little sister had put up a page reading, in part, that she wants to meet "GUYS!!!!" I mean--four exclamation points? Yikes! Wasn't she just six years old, like, yesterday?)

So all in all, even though old Rupert is profiting from it, well, so am I. And so far he hasn't tried to shove any of his Fox News viewpoint down my throat, so what do I have to complain about? Now if I could just figure out how people are managing to customize their pages, that would be very nice.