Myspace used to be so cool, and then it just got...well, a bit tired. Despite being slightly boring since the Facebook boom, Myspace holds a special place in my heart.
Therefore, I was quite pleased to find out that they now have a Profile 2.0 feature.
Gone are the days of having to risk getting your profile hacked if you wanted to add some third party's code to use their Hawt Pimped-Out Myspace Backgroundz. Now you can change the layout of your page, what modules you want to show, the colors, etc, without it looking like a big, nasty Flash glitter bomb.
You can change how your profile looks and feels while using Myspace's own technology, so you won't have to worry about the privacy and security of your account.
Oh wait, wait...
As I found out last night - this is not the case.
If you switch over to the Profile 2.0 feature, Myspace automatically set your privacy settings to PUBLIC without telling you.
Apparently, they think slinging up a casual message like this, buried into the Privacy sub-menu under the "My Account" menu is adequate notification that your profile and once private information is now is PUBLIC.
The "Profile 2.0 announcement" - notice how it doesn't say "Privacy announcement"- says that:
"Profile 2.0 does not have a single "public vs. friends only" privacy
switch. With 2.0, you can set privacy on a per-module level within the
profile editor. Just click the pencil on the right top of any module to
set its privacy. From the friends page, you can even create friend
categories to show parts of your profile to specific friends."
Again, please note that this message can only be found in "My Account" under the "Privacy" menu.
Therefore, if you had a private, "friends only" Myspace profile before upgrading to 2.0, the only way you would possibly know that your information is now public, would be because you either:
a) Happened to catch that you could see your profile without actually logging in first.
b) Happened to be on the "Privacy" menu and read the casual "Profile 2.0 announcement".
There is absolutley no warning of the changing of your profiles privacy before or after you upgrade your account. Just the measly little message above.
The first huge question is this: Why didn't Myspace simply set all of the "friends only" 1.0 profiles to automatically have all of their modules set to "friends only" when the user upgraded to a 2.0 profile, instead of making all the modules viewable by "everyone"?
Secondly, how do you set your profile back to private again?
Myspace says that you can "set privacy on a per-module level within the
profile editor." So, when I discovered that my personal, once private profile had been made public, I quickly dashed to the "profile editor" where Myspace said I could adjust my privacy levels back to what they were.
But if you go to the "Edit Profile" menu, there are no "pencils" at the "right top of any module" to adjust your privacy.
Clearly, you're supposed to know that when Myspace said "profile editor" they meant for you to go to the "Customize Profile" menu where, in top right corner of all your modules, you'll see a teeny tiny pencil graphic, which you can click and then choose your privacy levels for each and every module.
This is where it gets really irritating.
There is a massive "control panel" taking up half of your screen, and so you have to keep scrolling up and down and everywhere to click on all the tiny privacy pencils on all of your modules. You have to scroll to get to the module, scroll to see all the privacy option tick boxes within the module, and then scroll again to save.
Scroll. Scroll. Click. Scroll. Scroll. Rinse. Repeat.
And god forbid you accidentally click the 'x' at the top of each module on accident as it deletes the module. Or so I think. It's hard to say. But wherever the modules go - they disappear - with no 'undo' or 'recover' option to bring them back.
After I had already spent 10 minutes scrolling and clicking and fuming, I figured out that this can all be made much easier if you minimize the "control panel" and minimize the "modules" and then you can just click the damn privacy pencils with about 50% less scrolling.
The disappointing thing about all this, is that having different privacy levels for all the different modules is actually a brilliant idea. Having the option for people to be able to see your age, but not your location, or your blog but not your "About Me" is fantastic and prove helpful for a lot of Myspace users.
However, in my opinion, setting your entire profile to all "everyone" to see everything when your profile was previously on "friends only" lockdown without your knowledge completely overshadows whatever greatness there is in the new privacy features.
Usability and online privacy at its best, eh?