MySpace and My Images

Now I assume that if you are viewing this page you are a fan of the ever-popular website called MySpace.com. I actually used to have a profile on that site since I do a lot of photography for bands… and everyone knows that bands like MySpace.

I no longer have a MySpace profile for many reasons… the main reason being that I barely have enough time to keep my own site up-to-date. Furthermore, I do not approve of the subpar content that fills MySpace.

Several months ago I noticed that a lot of traffic to my site was from MySpace. While traffic is usually good… the traffic from MySpace was not so good. And now I will tell you why:

Almost all the traffic from MySpace is in the form of images being pulled from my server. These images would never include credit or links back to my site. That is, in reality, not cool. (I don't mind anyone using my images... but I expect a link back.)
Bandwidth consumption was increasing at a high rate because of the image usage-and I was not being compensated with real traffic. That is also not cool (for me).

So I have disabled the ability for anyone on MySpace to pull images from my site. Every time that anyone puts the source of any MySpace image from my site, the image will automatically display a graphic that has a text link to this page.

If you want to enjoy my photos or artwork, or if you want to make fun of my work, do so on my site rather than MySpace.com.

MySpace Alternatives

While MySpace.com has become a very popular website, it does suffer from some major flaws--especially that of lacking any set of standards. It is also very juvenile in overall nature. There is a more sophisticated way for bands and musicians (and other artists) to show off their work: the Artistic Network.

More Myspace Critiques

Below are some other websites that shed light on the dark side of MySpace.com and give reasons to Boycott Myspace.