In an attempt to give students a reason to disseminate the information on and existence of the Myspace page I created over Christmas break, I added student events that we don’t normally promote to our event listings. I figured asking the students to tell people about our events might meet with resistance, but providing information they would want to let their friends know about might help increase awareness about our site. So I added the student created events and then posted notes around the building letting them know about our site and the opportunity to forward event info to their friends.
A little aside here a moment. When I was attending an early morning roundtable at the APAP conference I mentioned that I had been reluctant to have a presence on Myspace due to the material I saw there. I added that recently artists and other arts organizations had been appearing on Myspace and that since the neighborhood seemed to be undergoing some gentrification, I decided to stick my toe in.
Someone at the table likened my reluctance to not wanting to get a cell phone because I was turned off by hearing people cursing on the phone and suggested I really needed to be more open minded about new technologies.
I disagree with his analogy since a cell phone like televisions, radios and computers all provide you with a mechanism to control what information you see and hear. While I take his point, I also maintain that it is not necessary to jump on every new trend and some trends are simply not appropriate for everyone.
You can imagine then that I emitted a groan when the first friend request we received after I let the students know about our site was from “Raunchy Asian Woman # 4.” My worst fears about the grade of clientele frequenting our site looked to be playing out.
On further investigation I recognized the person behind the site and realized the screen name was more bluster than substance. Since she and those like her are the type of people I am hoping to attract more of, I just have to take a few deep breaths, try to relax and shift my way of thinking when it comes to our Myspace presence.
