Terrific Tips to Browsing Within the MySpace Kingdom
MySpace has an immense list of members; that’s one of the reasons why everyone likes it so much. If there weren’t so many people with profiles, MySpace wouldn’t be half as much fun as it actually is. However, there is a bad side that comes along as an unfortunate side effect of the sheer mass of the amount of people registered. The downside is that it’s almost impossible to do an effective search. Of course, searches can be done; it’s just that wading your way through the pages upon pages of results can be a mind-boggling experience. When browsing through people who went to your high school, you might think that it’s just a simple search, but 2300 MySpace profiles later, you’ve seen the immensity of the website. You probably didn’t think there were that many people at your school, and imagine that not all of them have MySpace profiles…it’s truly a bit shocking.
Whether you’re searching for friends, for people to network with or if you’re searching for a group to join, there are some simple ways to make the experience slightly less painful. Notice that the word is not ‘painless’; it’s a difficult process, but it’s worth it. One of the easiest ways to make surfing MySpace easier is to do it at a time of day when the server is not absolutely inundated with requests. It may seem that virtually all of the time is a bad time when it comes to MySpace functioning properly, but if you are on the East Coast and up early, that is a good time. Likewise, if you’re on the West Coast and up late, it’s a good time for you too—as long as it’s not SO late that it’s prime time on the East Coast already.
In addition to choosing the time of day, be sure you have a set goal in your search, browsing is fun, but it’s a good way to waste a whole lot of hours that could be spent more productively, such as filling out surveys to post as bulletins. In all seriousness though, it’s best to have a topic in mind when you start your search. If you’re searching by keywords, choose as many keywords as you can and be as specific as possible. The more specific you are initially, the less unrelated nonsense you will have to sift through later on that is useless to you.
When searching for people, choose your school and then use the advanced features to choose some additional search criteria. Even if you don’t want to limit your search to your graduation year, at least limit the search results to a certain age window. If you’re 27, the 14 year olds now attending the school are not likely to be of much interest to you. Of course, you might get lucky and stumble across a little kid you used to baby-sit who’s not so little anymore, but that’s an oddity. Do yourself a favor and search for that kid by using his or her name if you’re that curious about how they turned out. Otherwise, you’ll have many more profiles to go through than you bargained for.
By far the most fun way to browse MySpace is by networking through your own friends’ list. Start with your friends and web yourself out from your own list to the lists of your friends’ and the lists of those friends. Try out the degree of separation rule (everyone on the planet is only seven links away from you) and see how accurate it is. You just might find some unexpected friends along the way.
