I’ve spent much of this week signing up for social networking sites. Primarily to write an article about them, I admit, but also out of curiosity. I keep getting invited to various ones, or getting notification e-mails that someone’s tried to add me as a friend on some site I don’t belong to, and I always mean to check them out, but never quite get round to it…

In short, the only thing I’ve learned this week is that people might use multiple sites, but the one they really rely on is MySpace. Messy, buggy, and constantly down for some kind of maintenance or other, MySpace is still king of the castle when it comes to networking - socially or otherwise.

Because some of the ’social’ bit’s gone out of it now, hasn’t it? Maybe it’s the Murdoch influence, or maybe it’s just rampant cynicism, but … who uses MySpace to make friends any more? Maybe teenagers. Everyone else is there to try to elbow themselves forward in their careers; to make connections that they otherwise might not be able to. And since MySpace is where everyone else is, it’s there that you need to go to make your mark. There’s no point being on a network if there’s no-one else there to network with.

So, yeah, in conclusion, if you’ve got something to promote, no matter what it is, MySpace is probably going to be your first stop nowadays. I’m starting to buy into that old superstition about mirrors and cameras stealing your soul, though; I think some essential part of myself might now be spread all over Facebook, Bebo, Twitter…

There’s going to have to be a backlash at some point. Otherwise we’re all going to start melding into one another like some horrific thing from an 80s horror movie.