Fresh

I am an avid user of Myspace, Facebook and Twitter and over the years I’ve discovered some pet peeves or as I like to call them, “Social Networking Crimes”. If you have an account with any of these sites, I am sure you will find a laugh or two on what people think are “cool” on these user generated sites. It certainly has been a love/hate relationship with these sites, but somehow I cannot pry myself away.

I’ll Myspace you…

1. I know HTML and CSS so let me pimp out my profile
Myspace allows users to customize their Myspace page by editing their CSS or finding a pre-made design online. This is great, but this also leads to horrific Myspace profiles that many users take seriously and think are “cool”. I’ve had friends ask me if this is the kind of work I do online and the look on my face is priceless. Let’s just say I made it clear to them that everything you do to your Myspace profile are all the wrong things to do in the web industry.

Sparkled graphics, animated gif of falling glitter, star dust following your cursor, no thanks! Ever been to a friend’s Myspace page and your browser freezes due to excessive image/video loading? Or how about a friend’s profile looking like something just threw up on the page? One way to reduce the chances of getting attacked by one of these glittery graphics is by disabling the HTML in your comments. You can find this change under Settings.

Here is an example of a sparkled graphic people leave on each others’ profiles. I’m sorry, not hot.

2. Friend requests from old friends and the guilt
Do you feel guilty for denying an old friend from your elementary, junior high or high school? Well, you shouldn’t be because online is the best and easiest way to deny people without giving an explanation. If I haven’t spoken to you in over 5 yrs, I most likely will not try to re-connect with you over Myspace. Also, I’ve come across old friends that request to add and when I do accept, they never message me. At times, I find myself doing a Spring cleaning and deleting everyone on my friend’s list that I no longer talk to. Delete and Deny are my two favorite links on Myspace.

3. Bulletin surveys = you just wasted 20 minutes of your life filling it out and 10 minutes reading it
I do have to admit, when I was new to Myspace I filled out the bulletin surveys, but only because I was bored. The bulletin feature was created to post announcements that all your friends can access, but nowadays users post up boring surveys and useless information about themselves on a daily basis.

4. Not on my top 10? Don’t take it personally
On Myspace you are given the feature to select however many people you would like to show under your “top friends”, and let me tell you people take this very seriously. I’ve had friends email me asking if I was mad at them because I took them off. No, it doesn’t mean anything. I am just re-organizing and throwing in some variety.

5. Don’t “hey sexy” me
I cannot count how many times I’ve gotten these ridiculous emails from random people on Myspace. Do you honestly think you will get a response when your subject line reads “hey sexy lady”? More than likely you will get a response from me with a subject line that reads “Douche Bag, unsubscribe”.

The bottom image is an email I received from a random user on Myspace. The only great thing about this email was that it made me laugh because I couldn’t believe what I just received. This is a perfect example of creepy people thinking they can develop a true friendship through Myspace. Not so much.

Facebook has real developers

6. Facebook applications are cool but…
Ever login to your Facebook account and see that you have one Zombie, one gift, one drink, one snow ball, one buddy jesus, one Friendship DNA Match application requests from your friends? Please save your clicks and don’t bother sending these invites to your friends. It is more annoying than anything. A way to stop getting these application invites is to click on any of the request in the right column and it will take you to the master application list. From there you can hit the “Ignore all” button.

7. Real life friends vs. Internet friends
How many friends do you have on Facebook? Does it really matter? Sad to say, but to some it does. There is nothing wrong with trying to meet new people online, but don’t go on a friendship binge and start adding random people to your friends list just to make yourself look like you have a lot of friends. I’m sorry to break the news but real life friends are way better than online friends.

Twitter adds fire to your A.D.D.

8. Twitter name: Dina225 (Obvious spammer)
Well, I am glad Twitter is staying on top of suspending spammer accounts. I went through all the spammers following me and majority of it was suspended due to strange activities. I don’t understand why spammers even try to be on Twitter. We can’t read their tweets if we’re not following them, so therefore they are wasting their time setting everything up only to FAIL.

9. Do you Twitter binge?
Have you ever gone to your Twitter page only to find the entire page filled with one person’s tweets? Yea, pretty annoying I would say. Spread your thoughts out over time and don’t tweet something 10 times in a row.

10. Lay off the Caps Lock would ya?
Writing in all caps is really hard to read, so please stop. Not only is it hard to read, but it expresses shouting. I am calling out one sports celebrity that recently joined the Twitter family and breaks this rule most of the time.

Busted:

If you are one of the lonely souls that doesn’t have a Myspace, Facebook or Twitter account, I’m sure you will have plenty of time during the holidays to spend hours sprucing up your profiles. Just remember to keep these 10 crimes in mind and you will be golden. I would love to hear what kinds of crimes you’ve come across, so don’t forget to share them with the rest of us!