Myspace is now letting its users place their friends into categories that they create. That’s a big improvement. I lamented last year (see post) about Myspace only allowing its users to place themselves in one category (Musician, Comic, Regular Person), and disallowing any labeling of a user’s friends.
My suggestion was:
1. let users label their personal profile(s), and to also label their external profiles (friends) WITH MANY keywords.
2. Allow users to Sort their Friends based on the Labels.
3. Allow users to make Lists/Groups, a feature presently available in YouTube.
Myspace’s recent change is an improvement. But, it still limits a user to categorize himself into a single, pre-defined Category. And it only allows you to place a friend into a single category.
The Myspace system apparently has trouble with such cutting-edge database structures as “many-many” relationships.
Even as it now is, though, it could greatly help a user navigate his list of profiles. At the least, she could have a Category: “Added for Quantity” and “Added for Quality (actual friend).”
New users will find this feature handy. But will legacy users, with thousands of friends, categorize all the existing friends? Only if it was Easy to do, or the user was aware of an Incentive…. Alas, and this comes as no surprise if you know Myspace, it is TEDIOUS AND TIME-CONSUMING to categorize existing friends… The user has to do it ONE AT A TIME!
Myspace’s failure to recognize the value of multiplicity has failed it again.
