… for me.

MySpace screenshot by Steven Vance

It does not make much sense why I still have my MySpace profiles (all three of them). It is not like I use them anymore. I check them occasionally to remind me why I stayed away for so long.

Yet it was only the other day when it hit me what bothered me most about the once-popular social networking website. As I look at my “friends” on MySpace and I notice that 70% of them are artists themselves; most of them being hip hop acts. At one point, I was get 4-5 requests a day from rappers and producers to check out their music and cop “their hotness.” Whenever I would post promotional bulletins, they were only being acknowledged by those involved with the event, never non-industry people.

Sure, it was me that accepted all these artists, but I do remember being quite discriminatory for a while until I just got bored with the practice. At some point, I just did not feel that the time I was investing on the site was merited by the dull results I was getting. That was when I decided to get my OWN space like you see here. Granted, I still did not know what I was doing, but I knew it had to have been better than my MySpace work. I must say it was the best move I have made in quite a while. My presence is stronger than ever and when I finally get the second phase for Frying in Vein going [which is very soon], I am certain I will see respectable results.

While preparing for this piece, I had to get some perspective from some of my comrades. I knew my incendiary headline was just that, almost to a level of absurdity. The site is still buggy and loads like cold molasses on a lumpy surface with a 15 degree incline, but it is still kind of necessary to have. In terms of owning your brand on the search engine, MySpace always ranks high, so it came as no surprise when my friends were not as supportive of my baseless accusation.
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Photo by kalandrakas

Would you like stark-raving mad fans? You know, the kind that will follow you across the country on tour and/or do just about anything you ask of them. Well, that is not going to happen if you come out the gate barking at them like a rabid Rottweiler.

In a world of push-up bra MySpace friend numbers, silicone Twitter followers and other plastic enhancements for your web presence, it doesn’t pay to be a Cherry. You have over 50,000 friends on a social networking site – so what? It does not mean a thing if you cannot get even 0.1% to pay attention to anything you say. Besides, there are way too many folks that are getting plastic surgery, which has diluted the potency of your hack. Every Ice T must have his Coco, I guess. I say “no, thank you.”

We are realizing that padding the numbers may not be as attractive as we might think, so now what do we do? How do we actually build a real fan base that we can leverage for real financial gains? Easy – all one has to do is be real and (somewhat) approachable.

That is the CliffsNotes version of it and probably not why you read up to this point. I hint at what it will take here on this blog quite a bit. Remember me talking about the Personable Geeks? Well, you just need to concede to being one and you will be well on your way.
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