What exactly is up with that? Like anybody who's anybody, Bruce now has an
official profile on MySpace. Actually, it seems he's had it for a while, but it hasn't gathered too much attention from the fan community. Maybe because it leaves everybody completely puzzled, including me. Is this thing really official? Does Bruce himself have anything to do with it? I can't answer the first question, but the second one must be "no". Bruce is described in third person and you don't see any personal comments from him. When that is said, there are signs that the page could be run by an insider and possibly even someone who's currently part of the Seeger tour party. Every show is being described in detail, including the nature of the crowd. Altogether the contents of the page in many ways blow away the contents of his official website,
www.brucespringsteen.net. First and foremost, it's completely up-to-date. Setlists are added instantly, and the news section is updated several times a week.
So what about one of the most important purposes of MySpace: sharing the music? Well, in that regard Bruce's page is definitely lacking. You won't find any exclusive audio downloads. The only multimedia you find here are links to some pretty random bootleg videos on YouTube. Actually, they are not even links. Just URLs that you have to copy and paste into your browser's address field.
And that's really the main problem with this page. Even for MySpace standards it's so amateurishly designed it's hard to believe this has been approved by Bruce or his organization. It's almost impossible to read the text without highlighting it due to a horrible background color and image. The problem is, IMO, partly inherent in MySpace, which seems to take pride in looking like something from 1996 before anyone had heard of usability and stylesheets, but surely something more could have been done to present things better.
Altogether - and this is probably just me being a bitter old man - I still fail to see what's so great about MySpace other than the fact that it's being used by millions of people and therefore there is bound to be a gem here and there. But why all those millions of people came there in the first place is a little bit beyond me. MySpace certainly didn't invent the community idea, and there are plenty of music sites that were more likely candidates for this kind of success.
Well, if anyone out there can shed some light on these mysteries - Bruce's profile and MySpace in general - I'm all ears. Oh, and by the way, I actually have my own profile there. I mean, I may not see much of a point, but darn it if I'm gonna be the only person in the world without one!
