well now that the good people

over at Valleywag have let the cat out of the bag, i can finally explain why on earth Buzznet would be Banned by Myspace.

if you try to say “buzznet” in an myspace email, it used to be considered obscene and you had to say something like “uzznetbay”

but now they have prevented anyone from using a Buzznet url in a message or in their code. so lets pretend that you have a Buzznet account and you took a cool picture and you want to show one of your friends on Myspace and you type the url in their comments — instead of it looking like it should: http://tony.buzznet.com it will look like this http://tony…

meaning your friend will think youre high (again) and have no clue as to what url youre talking about.

similarily if you try to put up something cool on your myspace page to make it look better like one of Buzznet’s flash photo galleries like i have on the left hand side of the busblog, you’ll get an error message.

however, as Valleywag pointed out, if you had put that flash gallery on your page before the crackdown your code has remained. but if you try to edit it, it will drop off.

so why are they banning us? we have no freaking idea.

we are miniscule, we are paltry, we are quaint.

myspace is owned by rupert murdoch’s fox and has over 75 million users.

buzznet is independently owned and has less than 1 million users.

to paraphrase depeche mode we’re a fly in their windscreen

in fact what will probably happen from this specific post is more people will probably go to myspace to witness the Buzznet censorship than will go to Buzznet, but it’s cool, we’re used to it.

but what’s very odd is not long ago myspace pulled this on the video community YouTube, preventing myspace users from hotlinking to YouTube content. eventually myspace stopped that practice and all was well with both companies.

so what’s odd is, why would myspace consider Buzznet more of a threat to their overwhelming popularity than YouTube who have millions of users and tons of hype including being mentioned in the Time magazine cover piece alongside… myspace?

is it because we were the official photo sharing community for Coachella?

is it because we allow our users to have hundreds if not thousands of photos in their accounts and they only allow twelve?

is it because we helped Knight Ridder get a Pulitzer by enabling them to reach out to their users and post pictures from the Katrina devistation while the boys at myspace are having their good name sullied with 140+ myspace deaths and reports of child molesters preying on their members?

i dont think so, but you never know.

anyways, i have a feeling that myspace probably did this because they could. some people, even the most powerful people feel uncomfortable just sitting around and enjoying their great success, they feel like they have to do something and sometimes the only thing that they can figure out to do is to stop someone or something.

even if theyre not bothering you, even if they could be someone who is a benefit.

Valleywag called Buzznet a direct competitor to myspace. i dont see it that way, i see us as two companies in the vast seas of the web. complimentary to each other. like peanutbutter and jelly, like hot fudge and ice cream, like jack and coke.

imagine if coca-cola heard that people were mixing rum or whiskey with their sugar water and wanted bars to stop selling booze. people would be all, wtf? buzznet is a photo sharing community that also has a wide variety of video content and personal blogs. myspace is a place for friends.

i dont know about you, but i use myspace to check out hot babes and see if my friends said something crazy about me on my profile. meanwhile after i get back from an event like Coachella and i want to post my 150 pics and 25 videos i go to Buzznet.

the two sites go very well together on my computer, i dont see why they cant get along on the web.

hopefully this issue of censorship will be resolved soon. we can only pray.

valley wag + laist makes a funny about it + paul

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