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I've been spending more time on myspace these past few days, which I can say is larger, more confusing, and clunkier than friendster. Because it allows users to add css code, hotlink images, sound, and video from other parts of the web, and generally muck things up, its also really, really messy, and sometimes loud and ugly. It's also anarchic and irreverent and fun.

It's also been infiltrated by predators, says Rob Horning on his popmatters blog. Marketing predators. He references a BusinessWeek article on the new forms of marketing taking advantage of myspace's groups and social networking.

He says it's troubling to relocate your group of friends to an online space so easily infiltrated by advertisers, but I've been thinking over the past day--has there ever been an instance in my life, from childhood to now, where an organizing 'event' among myself and my friends did not contain an element of advertising? From trading baseball cards in elementary school, having sleepovers and watching Saturday morning cartoons, and playing video games and listening to music, to meeting in bars for drinks--when have our social networks not been infiltrated by advertising?