It's Official.

It turns out that I had good reason to think that MySpace is crap.

It is.

If you look at the pages built by anyone for free, such as the sites built at angelfire (now a part of Lycos) or geocities (now part of Yahoo!), you can see what happens when bad design and a plethora of built-in advertising come together. And yes, I was even part of angelfire at one time, before I started this online enterprise of mine. I just needed somewhere to post my pages I built in my web publishing class, but it was appropriate at angelfire because I had nothing meaningful to say.

So I am proud to announce that the #1 Worst website, according to PC World, is MySpace.

From the article:

Yes, we know. With more than 90 million users, MySpace is now more popular than Elvis, "American Idol," and ice cream. But the Web's most visited destination is also its most poorly designed and counterproductive.

Actually, there are over 144 million registered accounts now, but it's my guess that most of them are managed by robots or people who have different motives other than social networking or music appreciation. You see, MySpace originally came about to promote independent musicians, and spread to every teenager's room in addition. It is a powerful tool for bands (I have a friend in Albuquerque who has gotten some attention with his group) but pretty much stinks for all other purposes. Now it is full of illiterate junkies who apply the worst of templates to their site and type in an awful new language to each other. Then there's the spread of spyware, the horribly obtrusive advertising, slow page loads, and the dangers of online child predators if nothing else has stopped you from going there. I plead with you: stop the madness.

So continue your web surfing, and do it safely around MySpace. It's really not worth it, and my opinion is now supported by a major media outlet.