However, it is apparent that the new MySpace does not want me to participate.
On Google+, I saw an announcement from someone who has transitioned to the new MySpace profile. I figured that I'd check Joe's new profile out to see what MySpace has to offer.
Unfortunately, I encountered this message:
If you look carefully at the icons, you'll see that there are icons for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. One very popular browser happens to be missing.
If you've read my posts for a while, you know what's coming. (Ann Landers mode time.)
So MySpace, I'll be happy to download one of those three browsers instead of the browser that I'm currently using on this computer.
Um...there's one condition.
Are you willing to pay my salary?
Because, you see, the computer that I'm using now isn't mine. My computer at home has browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that's a computer that I control. When I'm at lunch, however, I'm using a computer that I don't own - and if I insist on updating this computer, I might have a little minor problem with my future employment.
So after I pack up my things and am escorted off the premises, I can go home and play with a Safari web browser all I want - well, that is, until I have to cancel the Internet access, sell the computer, and move my family to Tent City.
Even though Tent City closed several years ago, after I wrote this rant. (Yes, I'm copying what I wrote a few years ago, but that's because the computer industry is copying the stupid moves that it made a few years ago.)
Now I'll grant that unless you're in the music industry, there's no overriding business case to access MySpace. Which is good, because as of now all of the new MySpace profiles are inaccessible to a lot of corporate America. I was unable to access statistics to see which computers only had a single web browser installed, but these statistics from earlier this year are illuminating:
The IE8 browser was the most used desktop browser, making up 25.4 percent of the market, followed by IE9 with 15.17 percent. Chrome 17 took third place with 14.73 percent, while Firefox claimed fourth place with 7.79 percent market share.
OK, perhaps an exclusionary tactic can be justified if you are a leader in your market. For example, if you're Apple, you can say that you're not going to support this thing or that thing and it really won't matter to a lot of people, because you're Apple. I'm sure that there are some Apple smartphone users running around today convinced that online maps are overrated.
Apple can do that, but can MySpace do that? Regardless of MySpace's actual user base (as of January 2012, even TechCrunch admitted that MySpace had almost as many users as Twitter), the perception is that MySpace is dead. In such a situation, MySpace needs every user that it can get.
