Editing 134: Myspace

{{comic
| number    = 134
| date      = July 28, 2006
| title     = Myspace
| image     = myspace.png
| titletext = It's like they got together and said 'what do we miss most from the internet in 1998? that's right, embedded MIDI!'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references a common issue that users would experience in the late 2000s on the now outdated website {{w|MySpace}}. At the time, an individual with a profile on that website would be able to choose a song that would automatically play when anyone accessed said profile. This was a heavily promoted feature in which the majority of users would partake. The song would interrupt whatever else the user was doing, such as listening to music, watching a video, or simply browsing in silence. 

For further context, MySpace at the time did not have a universal "news feed" to browse, so users would perform most of their interaction with other users by actively going to their profiles. Thus, the auto-playing music became a compounding problem, as the user could experience it several times per browsing session.

The "first five seconds" refers to approximately how long it would take a typical user to find the pause button.

Future social networks would eschew features like this, as they are perceived by the user base to be annoying and distracting. However, the issue in some ways persists, as sites like Facebook now auto-play sound on videos and advertisements (unless the user opts out).

The title text refers to the fact that old pages, back in the late 1990s, used embedded {{w|MIDI}} files, which would not only play automatically, but also have no way to stop playing. The viewer would have to leave the website or externally mute the audio. Additionally, some Macintosh computers at the time had a bug that would automatically play MIDI files at the maximum computer volume, making them an incredible nuisance. MIDI files do not contain actual audio, but instead contain instructions for which notes to play on which musical instruments, and upon playback, these instructions would render sound from a library of MIDI audio samples installed in the computer's operating system &mdash; audio samples that were often artificially synthesized and of poor quality, producing music reminiscent of early video games; this may have made these web pages with embedded MIDI even more annoying. (In fairness, it should be noted that high-quality MIDI audio samples are also available, often recorded from actual musical instruments, and capable of reproducing realistic music.)

==Transcript==
:[Computer screen showing a myspace page.]
:Oh man, you and everyone in earshot are gonna '''<u>love</u>''' the first five seconds of this song!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Social networking]]