I was totally on board with the SixDegrees craze back in the day. And then Friendster. And then MySpace, which I tried and was bored with by 2005.

And then MySpace got a huge surge of popularity, and people created millions of profile pages with all sorts of snarky commentary and bulletin-board posts. They hacked their profile pages with backgrounds and (mostly annoying) music.

I admit, I went back and updated my profile, wondering if I’d meet any new or interesting people. And then I got bored.

Apparently, I’m not alone. 

But why? These communities have millions of members, nearly every kind of interest under the sun, and have  even spawned TV shows like Project: MyWorld where three unknown girls go and meet people they know from MySpace all over the world. Obviously there’s a lot going on, so why would people back off from all of this?

Here’s the thing: on MySpace, the point is to drive traffic to your profile. As a band, there’s a benefit there: you want exposure. As a Regular Joe, you just want to keep in touch with your friends. Sure, you may find some friends you haven’t seen in a long time, but once you’ve done that it’s far simpler to just email and IM each other, and on those venues you don’t have to wait for some crappy profile page to load, get bombarded with useless ads, and deal with friend requests from God-knows-who.

So. Me? You’ll find me at the same place you’ve found me for years: my email and IM addresses. See ya there, it’s the new-new-NEW thing.