You can take this MySpace and. . .

Ok, so maybe there is no need to be that extreme. In the interest of open disclosure, as of this moment, I don't have a MySpace or a Facebook account, and so far, have no plans to have one. It does not mean that could not change, but that is the deal for now. I am intrigued by some of the work librarians have done in such spaces, thus I leave it open for me to try it out sometime. The only reason I have a 360 Yahoo! page is because it pretty much came along with the MyYahoo! I was already using. I doodle in it, but it is certainly nothing essential. Curious readers can click on the link in the margin to see my doodles. At any rate, the reason for this post's title is that the story of Gabe Henderson caught my eye. He is the guy who decided to cancel his MySpace. Yep, you read that right. The Iowa graduate student pulled the plug and is finding more freedom as a result.

Readers can find references to the story from The Wired Campus Blog and from The Kept-Up Academic Librarian.

There has been some recent discussions in the news and in blogs about how some students may be spending too much time on the Internet using services like MySpace, which may take time from some of their other academic endeavors. As I always say, the key is moderation.

Having said that, a recent article from The Washington Post for October 29, 2006, "In Teens' World, MySpace Is So Last Year," is making the rounds of the blogosphere. It seems a lot of teens are getting tired of MySpace and cancelling their accounts. My bet is that once they found out their parents were checking it out, it was time to leave for the next cool place. For some in the article, it boiled down to how much time they used to spend, time that can be well spent doing something else. So apparently, Gabe Henderson is not alone after all. However, detractors should not get too excited. MySpace and its ilk are not about to go away. They still get a lot of traffic and new users, so they will remain along with other newcomers to the social software field. May be interesting to see.