Where was I when the Internet changed?

Where was I when the Internet changed?

Morrissey has a page on Myspace, and I barely have one. In fact, they are premiering his new single on Myspace. And 100 million other users (or something).

This is the first "technology change" that has genuinely caught me totally by surprise. I have had a blog for at least 5 years, been watching video on my handheld, downloading movies, running my own web and email servers, ran my own Morrissey wiki, have been running remote desktops for ages, was on Friendster before all my friends....but this whole Myspace world, I am clueless!

How did it get so big so fast? Things they are doing way ahead of the rest of the internet
- personal publishing - blogs are exploding but Myspace profile pages are essentially super-simple personal blogs
- video publishing - ultra simple "put this song on my page" or "embed this video" behavior
- HTML friendly so supported by an ecosystem of add-on media outlets like Break.com or YouTube.com etc
- replaces IM and other messaging with its own mailbox
- Yahoo 360 is only 24 months late...but apparently that's way way too late
- the networking is way more "promiscuous" - anyone can see anyone's page, anyone can request to become friends with anyone
- there is tons of music content. Who makes pages for these guys? The indie band I get, but the Beach Boys...?
- the thing is crawling with porn stars and all kind of vain "meet me" camgirl types. It's really unbelievable

Essentially, it's something about going with the flow: On Friendster, if you were a band and you made a profile, they would delete it. They didn’t want bands on their site. If you made a profile for your company or for where you lived or a neighborhood or an idea, you’d get deleted. We recognized from the beginning that we could create profiles for the bands and allow people to use the site any way they wanted to. We didn’t stop people from promoting whatever they wanted to promote on MySpace. Some people have fun with it, and others try to get more business and sell stuff, like a makeup artist or a band, and we encourage them to do that.