55 people says things!

1. In a direct quote from Tom “I want the design to be ghetto simplistic so that everyone can use it.” So yes, it is “ghetto” by choice. During my short stint there as web designer, I became increasingly frustrated at the fact that I couldn’t redesign the pages, and that the programmers had absolutely no clue about standards-based design. If you take a look at the very first page you arrive at at http://www.myspace.com,, it is a static page that is XHTML 1.0. That was my work, and ultimately they butchered it.

   As far as convincing the MySpace community that there is a better, easier choice is something that I will be working on, as soon as my contract with MySpace expires… but that’s for another time I suppose. Don’t want to hijack your page to generate my own hype.

   The reason that MySpace became as popular as it is, was for a couple of different reasons. 1) Tom, Chris, and a number of the other people who started MySpace new the LA club scene. They used this to their advantage. By attracting the scenesters they were able to draw in other people as well. 2) At the time that MySpace was getting started, Friendster was going to change their service from a free site to a pay site. People unwilling to pay for a service then started switching to MySpace as the news of the site filtered through Friendster. 3) Few of the other community sites like Friendster and MySpace allow the personalization of profile pages like MySpace allows. On top of that, the fact that there was no easy “Profile Builder” in MySpace made it feel as if you were elite if you could create the CSS to customize your page.

   When you look at the combination of all those factors its easy to see how, in spite of the design, the community grew to what it is today.

   By Steven Ametjan on August 24, 2005 1:03 pm

2. Wow, can’t get a much better perspective than that. Thanks a bunch Steven. Indeed I can see how the LA club scene would definitely get the ball rolling. Sort of the same with Face Book and them hitting the University scene.

   Smart choice.

   By Scrivs on August 24, 2005 1:09 pm

3. From Stephen’s comment it sounds like the developers of MySpace were well acquainted with the lessons of The Tipping Point, and implemented them perfectly.

   By Mark on August 24, 2005 1:11 pm

4. A couple of points I disagree with (can you believe that - me disagreeing with Scrivs? - cmon)

   “…Great design trumps horrible design because it makes things appear to work easier…

   I’d argue that in the case of community sites, familiarity and comfort trumps design - good or bad

   “…design sucks them in. In a way it also causes a bit of lock-in…

   Maybe. But I’d further define that as saying status-quo locks them in. If it ain’t broke (you’re a thriving part of a community) why fix it or try to leave to start all over again?

   Let’s put community site designs in the same context as the clubs you frequent. Would you rather visit a broken down dive in a not so glamourous part of downtown where the people were great or go to the shiny new built perfectly new club where you didn’t know anyone - nor cared to?

   It’s not always about the design, it’s about the connection.

   By Mark on August 24, 2005 1:31 pm

5. So really you agree with me then. Makes sense.

   By Scrivs on August 24, 2005 1:34 pm

6. Yes. I agree with you generally on this post. I just didn’t agree with how you stated those 2 points I highlighted.

   By Mark on August 24, 2005 1:48 pm

7. Form follows function. People want functionality. It fit a need that people didn’t even know they had. A need to be able to communicate with everyone they know as well as meet new people all in one place. In the end the idea of MySpace was powerful enough to overtake the poor design. I think an improved design, architecture and a more intuitive interface would only improve the site.

   I don’t buy into the ghetto design being a pro idea. For example Ebay was ghetto. And the need for an auction site was greater then how poor the design was. But if you are new to the scene and want people to spend money there then you need to imply that you are reputable company. Ghetto design is not the route to take. Visually you are giving a first impression.

   Lucky for MySpace people wanted the tools more then they wanted tools that are visually appealing, organized and easy to navigate.

   By Daniel on August 24, 2005 3:01 pm

8. The community part makes sense but if it is so loved at it’s current level wouldn’t simple improvements just give myspace the ability to take over the world? Even if not how could they possibly hurt?

   The customization of pages could be it in theory except I haven’t a clue how to do it. I know it’s possible as I’ve seen the frightful (and occasionally nice) manipulations other users pull off but my brain refuses to stick a styled body tag in the middle of what appears to be a header. So in addition to being a member… I am a member with a hideous unstyled page. Go me.

   “ghetto simplistic” doesn’t HAVE to mean ugly or difficult for more advanced users. Simplistic should be simplistic for everyone… if it isn’t then it’s not.

   By sunshine lewis on August 24, 2005 3:19 pm

9. Simply put, MySpace is a train wreck. I will admit that I have been sucked into it, solely on the fact that I have friends that use it.
   As far as the concept of customizing goes, I will make my comments on that. Another guy who works in my office and I were joking around about how as to we both have myspace, and neither of us have customized our pages at all. Surely we could do a better job than anyone else on there. So one day, while I was feeling particularly slacker-ish at work, I took on the task of just tweaking out my MySpace a little bit. Two hours later bloody and frustrated, I decided that I would stick with the default layout. See, although it supports the use of CSS, without a reasonable markup, it’s basically worthless. Really all you can style is some of the table attributes. But since most of the sections aren’t properly class labeled, the most specific you can be is to define a style for like a table which is nested within 6 other tables. If that even makes any sense. The code I was writing was like nothing I’ve ever written before, and honestly, there was NOTHING practical about it.
   Even Facebook has a new design, that although it still relies on tables somewhat, is much more visual pleasing than it was before.

   By Dann Ryan on August 24, 2005 3:22 pm

10. I don’t disagree that the graphic design is poor, but why not mention the functionality and usability of the site as possible success factors? Graphic design is only one part of a successful design equation (IA, UI, Graphic, etc.). I’d be interested in Steven’s perspective on usability and meeting customer needs. Was testing a large part of the product evolution? Did user research play a roll?

    On another note, Steven’s comment about the club scene’s connectors playing a seminal roll was interesting. The same seems to be true in the indie rock/punk scene, where all the bands and "important" scensters are well represented and continually drawing more people in.

    Lastly, not only are the right individuals well represented, but bands (entities) are also represented and have the ability to self produce and broadcast their material to a focused audience. That to me is what makes My Space worth visiting.

    By Matt Dente on August 24, 2005 3:25 pm

11. Business 2.0 had a print story in May on MySpace where they attributed some of the success to the Indie band scene. Check the story out here (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1060100,00.html) and maybe you’ll get some additional insight.

    I think the Tipping Point theory is definitely true. After a point, the users of the site actually defend a site to ensure its survival. The switching costs are just too huge once you are fully invested.

    Witness Amazon.com as an example. With every subtle move they make to involve you (e.g. Wish Lists, Lists, Friends, Ratings, Ownership Records), they ensure that they will continue to exist. I personally value them so much that I will update their records for the books that I purchase elsewhere. And as such, they get lots of my business out of pure convenience. Thinking of switching to B&N is not an option online, though I do partake of their bricks, mortal, and latte (just not all mixed together).

    By Bill Eisenhauer on August 24, 2005 5:13 pm

12. At least, that company MySpace can pay me some of the bandwith they consumed by the image linking caused by it users. I banned MySpace cause every day i server 350 MB of images for his dearest users…

    F*ck them.

    By mini-d on August 24, 2005 6:05 pm

13. @Matt

    Usability: The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product. High usability means a system is: easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors.

    Looking at that definition for usability, I don’t really see any part of it that MySpace does really well. Let’s go through it one point at a time.

    Is MySpace effective at allowing you to stay in touch with friends? I guess you could argue that it is, but is it any more effective than IM, email, or blogs? Not really. It’s just a different form of all three, amalgamated into one product that doesn’t do any of it extremely well.

    Is MySpace efficient in letting you message a friend, leave a comment, or write a blog post? Not by a long shot. Unfortunately the code that powers MySpace has grown organically and has become difficult to manage, and all the excess code is slowing the site down. Not to mention the combinations of technology that they are trying to use (CF and ASP.NET). Because of the two technologies the servers have to run double duty, switching between ISAPI modules which zaps the efficiancy of the servers to almost nothing. This all combines to create a site that is slow and unresponsive.

    Does MySpace satisfy the needs of the users, and is it a pleasure to use? Umm… not by a long shot. I honestly can’t think of a single person that is happy with MySpace. They only use it because that’s where everybody else is, and because there really is nothing that is leaps and bounds ahead of the game. The site is frustrating to use thanks to it’s lack of clear navigation, and how slow the servers run, and because everything about the site breaks at least once a week. Either servers go down, and there’s no redundancy, or they try to prune the code and end up removing something that is essential to the program. On top of that, the way they add and remove new features becomes aggravating as well.

    Now, as far as user testing goes, during the time that I was there there wasn’t any. I never once was allowed to perform a user survey on new comps that I was working on (none of which have come to fruition). The only “user testing” that we did was show things to Tom. If he could figure out how to use something, it flew. If he had trouble, we went back and tried again. I think this has a lot to do with why things are the way they are at MySpace. Tom has his hands in everything, and a boss that micro-manages something like MySpace is bound to cause problems in the long run.

    By Steven Ametjan on August 24, 2005 8:02 pm

14. myspace becoming so big was 90% pure luck.

    By tim on August 25, 2005 3:53 am

15. Hmmm. I think good sites can do well despite bad design - and this may be an example of that. Another example is a site I use occasionally - http://www.7dayshop.com - this site sells photographic stuff very cheaply for the UK market. The design is awful, the navigation very difficult. But I use the site because it provides me with what I want.

    The real issue with these sites is how do you know they deliver what you want when they’re badly designed? In the case of 7dayshop, the site was recommended to me by a friend - and I’ve recommended it to others. Had I have found it by search, say, I’d never have used it. That’s where design becomes really important.

    By richard leader on August 25, 2005 4:03 am

16. I did some work for eBay a while back. They told me to tone down the concepts level of production. Why? They were going for a more “pedestrian” look and feel.

    By Glass on August 25, 2005 4:09 am

17. didn’t you misspell “Microsoft UI’s” into “MySpace” ?

    By tristan on August 25, 2005 4:44 am

18. Sometimes I wonder why I even try to make websites look good. The ones that make the most money, has the most visitors, and has the most potential look like a burnt fried egg that has been dropped on the side of the road with all sorts of concrete bits, rocks, and sand all over it.

    By Bryan on August 25, 2005 9:35 am

19. Steven mentions it, but its incredibly important. The fact that many/most users edit the CSS of their page to completely customize their profile is hugely significant. At that point, the brand relinquishes its visual identity and it becomes the community, which is made up of many unique pages with distinctive visual designs.
    As a user, being forced to keep your profile on a page that looks similar to everyone else’s (Orkut, Friendster) is a huge deterrent when you have complete ability to change the look of your myspace profile.

    By Paul Irish on August 25, 2005 9:37 am

20. As an ex-forum moderator on myspace I can only agree with Steven on all points.

    The moderators(several of which were ‘profile designers’ also) had begged, pleaded and opined for something to be done to improve the jury-rigged forum system only to be told ‘we are working on that’ for months on end while really none of those changes were being made.

    IMO if myspace is to remain popular and not suffer the loss of users in the way friendster did(due to massive slowdown/downtime), Tom needs to realise that his employees often have more of a clue about what direction the site should be taking and that the only way to allow them to work effectively is to do so with less micro-managing and more creative solutions from the aforementioned employees.

    By deletionator on August 25, 2005 9:46 am

21. I am on my second profile on MySpace, I left in frustration months ago because the interface was slow at times, the design just plain sucked, and I did not feel like it was worth it… but now I’m back. I have a profile, and some friends that read my posts. Is it worth it? Yeah I guess so, but it’s weird because the only reason I’m on there is to get feedback on my writing, and most of my friends don’t read the blog posts… go figure.

    By Tanner on August 25, 2005 9:52 am

22. David Vogler wrote an excellent (and humourous) piece for the AIGA on the same sort of insight. Does a website have to be good to be popular? Vogler takes us on a tour of the best of the worst of the web.
    Check it out:

    http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=360570

    By Jennifer DiCastrianno on August 25, 2005 11:50 am

23. My theory is that eBay was a success due to its crappy design because it gave it that flea market feel

    Hmmm, this sounds familiar.

    By jkottke on August 25, 2005 11:58 am

24. I think one thing most people are forgetting is that 99% of the people on Myspace don’t give a rat’s ass if things are web standard compliant. The thing that irks me about Myspace is there is no easy way to aggregate blog posts from my friends. And if there is no easy way, I won’t read them. I don’t want to load ANOTHER webpage when I have my Bloglines account. It’s the same reason I use Adium for AIM,MSN,Yahoo and gTalk.

    But like many people, most of my friends are on it and use it to contact people in lieu of IM’s or emails. I think someone needs to build a social networking site based around the postal service. Real letters are so much cooler anyways.

    By brandon on August 25, 2005 12:55 pm

25. I agree with your article, but find your use of the term ‘ghetto’ as a synonym of bad design offensive. I’m sure you don’t mean to imply that ugly design has anything to do with areas of a city exclusively inhabited by minorities due to social restrictions. I’m sure you would agree that much beautiful art and design has come out of ghettos.
    I know bloggers aren’t journalists, but your writing will improve if you think carefully about the words you use and what you are implying.

    By fake is the new real on August 25, 2005 3:40 pm

26. Being a minority myself growing up in not the ‘best’ of neighborhoods I do understand the implications of using the word ‘ghetto’ and I trust the intelligence of my readers to distinguish between my use of the word and the actual benefits that can come from a ‘ghetto’ community.

    By Scrivs on August 25, 2005 3:44 pm

27. I submit craigslist as a site with deliberately bad design (some would say no design) that is still very successful. To say the site is bare bones would be the understatement of my lifetime. Probably a lot of the success of the craigslist is the fact that it doesn’t seem like some faceless corporation hired a design firm to polish the life out of it. Sometimes low design is actually good design.

    By Joey on August 25, 2005 4:07 pm

28. Yeah, fake, and not everyone who grew up in “not the greastest” of neighborhoods is a minority.

    I can personally attest to that.. so, umm, yeah. Thug Life, biatch.

    And sorry to nitpick this point, Scrivs - but you just happen to be the 10th person I’ve heard say that MySpace was acquired for $580M.

    I’m sure you know this, but it was their parent company (InterMix Media) that was acquired for $580M.

    After a few google searches, you can (through indirect means) find out the actual value of MySpace at the time of the acquisition.

    If MySpace investors were paid $36M for a 25% stake in MySpace itself, that puts the valuation of MySpace at $144M.

    Still an assload of money, but not quite $580M.

    By Shanti on August 25, 2005 4:14 pm

29. Shanti, you are correct and I was aware of that fact. I oversimplified in this case. Thanks for informing everyone.

    By Scrivs on August 25, 2005 4:22 pm

30. You forgot one thing: the crappy MySpace UI was eight times better than the crime-against-mankind Friendster UI. people switched in drove (cause it was basically just those two at the time), and…game over.

    By Billy K on August 25, 2005 4:23 pm

31. To reiterate Steven’s point about standards, often times the site fails to set the Z-index for the flash based banner ads, having them appear in all sorts of crazy places.

    I think people stick with the site, as you said, because of the time they’ve already invested. However, I certainly don’t believe ‘ghetto simplistic’ style lends to the usability in any way.

    By Beth on August 25, 2005 5:09 pm

32. Was on MySpace. Gave up and went to Tribe. Got back on MySpace after realizing it had 15 times as many people in my area (a backwater town in the middle of the ocean) as any of the other social networking sites. Then I found out it was owned by a spyware-related company, AND was being sold to the folks that owned FOX News. That was a little more than this particular camel’s back was about to stand. ;) Yeah, MySpace and Orkut beat Friendster in some ways… but better things, like Tribe and Multiply, have since transcended them. Things continue to evolve.

    By Daniel on August 26, 2005 3:08 am

33. Aren’t we forgetting a very important factor? The key audience? It is often thought of as any person who cares to use it, but even the most general community site has key audience that is directly linked to their survival/success.

    I mean, I agree that from a design and usability point of view MySpace is awefull. But that’s me, the designer, speaking.

    The most influential people surrounding MySpace are teenagers (with all their excitement, need to belong and interest in trivial things). Imagine being a teenager and are given the choice to walk into a messy room with hip hop music blasting from the stereo or to walk into a room that looks more like an executive’s office than anything else.

    What is really flawed is that crappy design shouldn’t autmatically exclude standards adhering code.

    By oddend on August 26, 2005 7:23 am

34. Slander the user, not the service. Myspace is an excellent business model. Wish I had thought of it. Hell, it made Tom almost $600mil richer, and he was doing it for fun right? I wouldn’t say Myspace is sloppy… it definatly is nicer than Friendster. Plus it has made it further. The subject of this slander should be “Myspace user… Sloopy designers or designer wannabe?”

    By Dale on August 26, 2005 9:43 am

35. Well it’s at least nice to know that Steve tried to stop them. The whole flea market ghetto design concept is completely flawed. While looking sophmorish may help get people there based on “small guy” mentality. It does not mean you can throw out design and code poorly. That site throws errors for me all the time. It’s obviously coded by 3rd graders. Or at least that’s what it seems like.

    Ia similar problem with Dann. I tried helping my friend style her page, and I succeeded about 50%. The poor standards killed the design all over the place. Even though the html “template” I downloaded to work with looked decent all the ads and extra junk that is put in on the fly broke it on the site.

    I’ve been ranting about MySpace (though not online) for years.

    I really think if you’re going for a certain look, then go for that look. But that doesn’t mean you should be an idiot about it. It sounds more like Tom is making excuses for the poor coding going on. “Ghetto” really, really, doesn’t mean the code should suck. (I added in those extra reallys just in case no one could gather my blind hatred). ;)

    If anyone can kill off MySpace with something better, I’ll buy you a beer. Hell, I’ll buy you 50 beers…

    By jake on August 26, 2005 9:50 am

36. Make that 580 million beers, and you’ve got yourself a deal.

    ;)

    By Dale on August 26, 2005 1:39 pm

37. When I first discovered MySpace, it was my friends talking about it during class one day. Since I don’t take a huge interest in things that suck ass, I hadn’t really looked into MySpace enough to know what it was entirely. The poor design and frustrating UI was enough to turn me off from it, and the only reason I have a profile there is because, you guessed it, my friends use it. Might as well join the party, right?

    And I agree, the #1 reason anyone uses MySpace is because that’s where everyone else is. Beyond that I’ve not heard a single compliment about any of the site’s features, ever. And although the user CSS thing is a good idea, it only serves to make me hate my friends’ profiles on top of the initial design.

    By Vladimir on August 26, 2005 2:42 pm

38. “Okay really, why is it popular?”

    Because it’s a hookup site.

    By Richard on August 27, 2005 2:12 am

39. Hmm. Check out this “software”. If you go through the demo it looks exactly like Myspace.com. Not saying it is the same, but very, very similar.

    http://www.alstrasoft.com/efriends.htm

    (not at all involved with this company)

    By SGL on August 27, 2005 4:48 pm

40. MySpace and friendster both try to shove the “social interaction” part of their plan down your throats. it’s not natural enough. it doesn’t let ppl discover and interact on their own.

    for a real example of creating, not only a social network, but a community that becomes the content take a look at http://purerave.com (don’t let the name fool you). purerave isn’t about dating your friend’s friend’s friend. it’s about finding your own fit into the community; interact or not, it doesn’t matter.

    By joel on August 27, 2005 4:54 pm

41. Poor design is the #1 reason I went to the site about a month ago and left within 10 seconds never to return. Unorganized and far from easy to use, MySpace is an eyesore for those that know the web best and know what is actually worth looking at.

    By The Knoxvegan on August 27, 2005 9:21 pm

42. I ran across this site while looking for a profile site. I was bored. What can I say?

    This is all very interesting, but I have to admit that, while myspace is very scene, it’s a lot more than that. In this day and age, sadly no one is meeting face to face anymore. Computers, however, have become are means of communication. Honestly, I would have to admit that all of the people currently in my life, I have met online. Myspace has become one of those venues to meet people. It also is a great way to catch up with old friends. Since I have been part of the myspace community, I have met some wonderful and talented individuals. There’s some great networking going on there. I think that the site’s success these days is beyond Tom’s reach. I have been able to reach people through myspace that I haven’t spoken to in 10 years, and I’m only 21 years old. The site is really just an excellent way to show people from your past that you havent forgotten them. And, I’d have to say that myspace is intriguing to me because there are lot of different types of people there. You have scenesters, rockers, indies, intellectuals, etc etc. The site is accesible to everyone. I believe that its success comes from word of mouth. Also, I would have to add that the design is of no relevance at least to me and many of my friends. There are many sites that one can design their own profiles in, but we dont belong to them. With myspace, you have many functions- blog, comments, messages, instant messages, pictures, etc. Let’s not forget the search engine, and yes, I have used myspace as a hook up site. My best friend, who I met on myspace, met her boyfriend on myspace. It’s all a big family now. That’s something that money and design cant really create. There’s a sense of community, and having a better design isn’t the defining factor for that.

    By Melly G. on August 28, 2005 11:16 am

43. I’m surprised no one has drawn the obvious comparison: Geocities. Free personal space, lots of tiled backgrounds in profiles, embedded sounds or music, we’ve seen this before but it’s been a few years. Myspace really looks like a Geocities that has half a dozen options to fill in rather than allowing free-form webpages.

    By Mike on August 28, 2005 5:16 pm

44. As some of you may know, thefacebook.com just got a subtle redesign. It’s a nice CSS-based design. Nothing flashy, but definitely clean and professional looking.

    Well, the other day, in the daily student newspaper for the University I work at, there was a commentary about how now that “the facebook is all-professional and stuff,” how long before they start selling our private information, add a bunch of advertisements, etc.

    I just thought it was interesting that in this case, the professional design actually scared someone, rather than pleasing them…

    By Jeff Croft on August 29, 2005 11:57 am

45. My best friend, who I met on myspace, met her boyfriend on myspace. It’s all a big family now. That’s something that money and design cant really create. There’s a sense of community, and having a better design isn’t the defining factor for that.

    Um, no Melly, that’s not true. If design weren’t popular, then brands that we all know and love (or loathe) wouldn’t be recognizable, let alone desirable. So until such time as Vanity Fair gives up shilling for Prada, Calvin Klein, D&G, Louis V. and all the rest, you should know that DESIGN matters, and will continue to matter. After all, even your friend who found her husband wouldn’t have dated him if he didn’t have that look (to some extent). And that’s design, even if it’s unintentional.

    And perhaps that’s the real answer here - the unintended design works because it’s a mess, much like, really, our own ‘real-life’ social networks are messy. Perhaps the visual mayhem and mess of myspace is reflective of the fact that we have friends who are hippies, yuppies, guppies, groupies, geeks, nerds, princesses, kinks, twits, whatever… they just are, and we don’t have any control over their design either.

    But I don’t like MySpace either, so…

    By Kevin Michael Hamm on August 29, 2005 10:18 pm

46. Myspace is abhorrent. I only wish I had come up with the idea myself a while ago. I could’ve implemented it way better and probably gotten more money out of the deal :)

    The real reason that it functions isn’t because of features or things like that. It’s that it makes it easy to start with. Then you get bored one day and you learn how to code it. I got sucked in because someone put me on there for a project. The only reason I ever went back was because I found out my girlfriend had a profile on there because people she knew were only on that and not on facebook (which is leaps and bounds better than myspace, even before their redesign).

    Facebook would enjoy more popularity if it allowed more pictures and community colleges. I guarantee that. I almost offered to redesign facebook, back in the day. I never got around to it :)

    By Joe Clay on August 30, 2005 4:14 am

47. I wrote a similar blog entry a while back…altho maybe more sarcastic…making it my URL on this comment…

    By daniel on September 1, 2005 11:05 am

48. I have to comment on this one.

    Yes, ugly sells. Yes, ugly works. I have had so many conversations with people over the years, as a programmer and owner of a business that helps folks deal with content, about this very subject.

    It has been my experience that ugly design can sell products well, motivate people to do things, and overall be an effective modus for communication.

    I’ve done a LOT of legit email marketing. This is generally typical abc comparison stuff. I was FLOORED when the professionally designed templates done by several in-house designers got their open and click-through rates consistently handed to them in a hat by emails that were running as controls and consisted of no more than straight hacked-up html 4 code.

    How is this possible? Well, the obvious answer is the conclusion hinted here — that ugly sells. But I think that’s missing the point.

    There might be (and this was my experience) something that “ugly” web design has that is sorely lacking in the modern template web design arena (not just web standards templates, but just in general). Specific things I looked at, but didn’t have a large enough sample to really find out include:

    density of information (kerning, etc)
    location of information (on the page, above the fold)
    font readability (times has been around a long time for a reason)
    historical “just used to it” kind of things
    colors are usually all pretty basic

    One of the interesting tests I did was to compare two slightly different emails, one with a beautiful graphic header and one without, and overall, the one without the header tended to perform better, when when a blank image was included where the header would have been (same send size). So… how is this possible?

    There is a lot of research that needs to be done in this area. There must be some cogsci explanation for my experiences with the mailings, and the phonomenon of “ugly design”.

    - Jonathan Lambert

    By Jonathan Lambert on September 1, 2005 5:45 pm

49. I guess it comes down to this…. Pretty is distracting. Ugly gets the fluff out of the way. At least, as long as it doesn’t get IN the way.

    By JC on September 1, 2005 5:55 pm

50. I was looking at this for an article about the Myspace Craze at my school, but none of this information seems to be in anyway irrelevant to anything about myspace, just how the design is “ghetto” for one I do not get how it is ghetto! I have an account and some of the designs are very clever a mixture of simple codes to make the design more complex many examples through the site! Make sure to email me about this because I am just 16 and I would love to see this concept before I do a complete article in a paper about Myspace when I do not understand a lot of the information given in most sites about Myspace.
    Thank You

    By Starr Stultz on September 2, 2005 12:27 pm

51. check it!

    http://www.myspace.com/ikickedapanda

    using CSS you can make a cleaner profile. Ok, i’m not a design master, but i think it is nice

    By Victor Ramirez on September 4, 2005 1:29 pm

52. um check out my myspace just go to search and go to shelby menotti request to be my friend

    By shelby on September 6, 2005 3:25 pm

53. why am i posting a commet??

    By susan on September 6, 2005 11:25 pm

54. get more chicano art or lowrider art stuff

    By orlando on September 7, 2005 12:29 am

55. Myspace rocks!It’s the fact that you can design your own page and the more u surf myspace the more you learn how to make your page better. It’s totally addictive.

    By Abigail on September 7, 2005 4:10 am

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