No Space (Possibly)

I got an invitation to join Facebook. I accepted immediately and set up my profile.

Then I went about removing myself from MySpace. I know I could leave it up. My MySpace profile could remain in place forever, a museum display of the mid-nineties in suburban geekery, untouched by the account owner, its only visitors Legitimate Nigerian State Banking Officials and Bored Cam Girls.

But leaving it in place implies that there is no other social networking site containing my information, or at least that there is some loyalty to MySpace.

Also, I wanted to see how hard it is to quit.

So I logged in and hunted down my 'Account Settings' area. There was a Delete Account button. That's pretty handy, so I just pressed that.

Of course I got a confirmation "Are you sure you want to delete your MySpace account?" dialog box.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Click.

"All your profile settings will be lost and you will need to completely rebuild your friends list if you decide to join again. Are you sure?"

Click.

"A confirmation email has been sent to the registered email address."

So I waited for the email to arrive.

And when it did it contained a link to the super-special Account Deletion page. There was another button there to confirm that I was leaving MySpace forever and another dire warning about how difficult starting over would be.

Click. Click. Click. Click freaking click.

And then I was told that my account might be deleted in 24 to 48 hours. "Might be", because I'm not sure there is a process in place on the back end for that to actually happen.

The point is this: If you've added me to your MySpace friends list, you "might be" missing one friend in 24 to 48 hours. As MySpace tracks friends, anyway. This whole process in no way effects my actual real-life affection level for anyone, no matter what MySpace seems to believe.

And I'm on Facebook now, so email me if you'd like to be added to my . . . "Faces" list, I guess?

I'm not sure how not having MySpace will impact my life, overall. Even though my profile was set to private I always had concerns that potential employers would find a MySpace page for me and assume the worst, especially since the profile was private. It seemed to be intentionally hiding something I don't want strangers to know, and the imagination would easily manufacture things in my profile far worse than anything actually there.

The project for this week is to document some drunken escapades for Facebook. My public Facebook profile will be filled with incriminating material of my own choosing. I'm not about surprises.

If I load my Facebook profile with some mild antics then any potential employer will expect that these are the limits of my depravity. They will assume intimate knowledge of my life before an offer is extended. I should say "I'm not about surprises when I'm the one being surprised", because that is more accurate.

Not that my Facebook profile will ever be an exercise in accuracy.