I got the new Thursday album today, on a Thursday. Thursday is one of few bands that I still listen to even after they signed to a major label. Their last album "War All The Time," was their first major release. I bought it thinking it would go straight into the trash without importing into my iTunes library. I was quite surprised. I thought it was their best album to date. I think Rise Against’s major album was also a good one. But this is a rare occurrence, since 99% of all bands I like that release an album with a major label goes straight into the trash. I may be guilty of buying crappy music due to fan loyalty, but I make sure it doesn’t make it into my permanent collection.

While listening to the album for the first time, I read the booklet that will likely never again see the light of day. On the last page – they listed a link to their website, which every band would do if you have a website. But right next to their offical website, they put on a link to their MySpace page. Why? Why? Why? would you ever print a link to MySpace? I don’t understand why bands that have their own website need a presence on the worst website in the world.

Maybe $580 million isn’t that much for Mr. Murdoch, but someone should tell him he got ripped off...badly. Whoever negotiated the deal, actually whoever had the idea of this acquisition fucked up big time. The following is what comprises of MySpace’s assets and I did the honor of assessing its financial value.

Asset	Value	Detail
Website: Software	$500	If the visual design of the site is a reflection on the code, (which often is) then the site is completely worthless. Not to mention it is written in Cold Fusion. Cold Fusion!
Website: Hardware	$1,000,000	I’m assuming over the years they acquired hardware to maintain the supposed 15 million users they have. So a million bucks should cover that.
Technology	$0	There is no technological innovation whatsoever. Any competent team of programmers can build a prototype over a weekend. Their technical challenge is to maintain uptime under heavy usage. Basically, the same problems Friendster had.
User Access and Personal Information	The rest $578,999,500	The only thing valuable on MySpace is all the 16 year old users of MySpace (well...and all the middle age pervs.) MySpace maybe a free service, but is it? It’s not. Users actually pay by giving the service more financial value.

I think social networking sites and discussions of creating an “online self” is an interesting topic. But MySpace is the worst implementation of that. The website is ugly. If it’s supposedly worth $580million why won’t they hire a designer to design the site, and not make it so obvious that it was done by their crappy Cold Fusion programming developers. At least their markup isn’t so bad, but this is a rant! No pats on the back.

I’m going to pick on their design, because although people don’t believe me, I still consider myself a designer.

The lack of any consideration for aesthetic appeal is clearly evident, not just because the site is ASS UGLY. They let their users mess with their own page. That’s a big fat no-no, especially since all the pages are publicly accessible. When you give people control over how things look, you’re definitely going to get the ugliest things you have ever seen.

Homer Simpson taught us that. Remember the episode where he designs a car for his long lost brother? The lesson from that episode is don’t let people have what they want, give people what they want. Just like design, don’t do what clients want you to do. Instead, convince them what you delivered is what they want. Afterall, you’re the designer with the expertise to make things look good.