joe, beta

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USA Today

 

"I Am a MySpace Zombie," or "Read the Fine Print Before You Jump" [Image]

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I recently used http://suicidemachine.org to try to kill my MySpace account. The USA Today quoted me brief in this article - http://bit.ly/joequote - and I went quietly along, MySpaceless and happy.

I wrote it up on here - http://bit.ly/byemyspace - and linked to the memorial page - http://bit.ly/myspacegrave. But, as you can see in the image above, my account lives on.

It probably doesn't hunger for brains, or wail in eerie unison with crowds of other undead, but it lives, after death.

The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine appeared to have done its job very well. After all, you can watch while its automated magic tears your account down, wrenching friends from YourSpace and leaving nothing but the bones.

Or so I thought.

The truth is, I should have read more closely. The Suicide Machine did what it claims to do, nothing more and nothing less. It merely purports to delete all of your friends, but my photos remain untouched. They don't *actually* delete the photos, or the entire account for that matter.

Now I know that. But don't let it discourage you from taking advantage of the machine to make deleting your account that much easier.

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USA Today Quotes Me in Social Networking Article, Gets It (Mostly) Right - USATODAY.com [Quote]

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Another frequent complaint from social networkers is that the variety of sites is overwhelming. Joe Ross recently used Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to wipe out his existence on MySpace, because he felt the site was getting too commercial.

"It was very cool to watch," says Ross, 26, a law student who works for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. But don't write him off the scene yet.

"I'm still on Facebook, and I'm a heavy Twitter user and blogger," he says. "Most of the people I'm friends with are people I wouldn't know if it weren't for social networking."

What I think I actually said was "Most of the people I'm friends with ON SOCIAL NETWORKS are people I wouldn't know if it weren't for social networking."

But still, it's pretty cool to be quoted in a newspaper.

USA Today article:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2010-02-10-1Asocialbacklas...

Read more about my experience with the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine here:

http://joebeta.com/tag/web20suicidemachine

And try it out yourself, if you dare, here:

http://suicidemachine.org/

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