Earlier today, I received a message from a MySpace Friend, informing me she noticed in her Friends Updates section that “Pamela Richardson is now friends with Pamela Richardson, thanks to the MySpace Friend Finder tool.” I responded that I was relieved to hear this, having had a falling out with myself soon after the holidays and wondering whether attempts to patch things up had been successful. My Friend and I bantered a bit more, then I decided to get to the bottom of this, as it were, and have a look for myself. I opened my companion page, the MySpace profile for my band, The Pralines (http://myspace.com/thepralines); sure enough, there it was, the joyous news that I had, in a manner of speaking, found myself. I clicked on “Friend Finder,” which turned out to be a link to a MySpace Invite page – a handy little recruitment tool divided into three sections:

• Find Your Friends on MySpace
• Invite Your Friends to MySpace
• View Sent Invitations



When opened, the page defaults to the first of these tabs – a method of browsing your personal e-mail address books to see which of your correspondents already are part of the MySpace community. It offers the choices of Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, HotMail and Windows Live Messenger. Apparently, this service is restricted to these parent choices and accounts within. You start by selecting the appropriate choice for the mail service you use; then continue to Step 2, where you type in your e-mail login address and password. (Note: MySpace does not store your e-mail login info.) The dropdown menu in Step 2 changes to provide the suffix choices available from the e-mail address book you selected on Step 1. (For example, select AOL and you’ll be able to log in to an account under “@AOL.com” or “@AIM.com.”) You then click the “Find Friends” box, and voila – the screen displays a list of all your e-mail contacts who have existing MySpace profiles. You then can select the ones you wish to invite to be your Friends.




The second tab is a manual version of the previous. It doesn’t provide the options of personal e-mail providers (e.g., Yahoo, AOL). Instead, it uses the e-mail address you supplied when you built your profile, and it allows you to fill in a box with your friends’ e-mail addresses. Type in the addresses you wish to contact, click “Send Invitation;” it’s that simple.




The third tab allows you to view all invitations you’ve sent to date. It indicates the date the invitation was sent, name/e-mail address of recipient(s), and status of each request. Although I’ve not yet used this service, I already can see that this third tab would be invaluable. The ol’ memory isn’t what it used to be, and I certainly don’t wish to unwittingly contribute to my friends’ Spam by sending multiple invitations to join my group.




So what started out as a lighthearted exchange about the silliness of automated tracking tools turned out to be educational for me. I may make use of this handy service very soon. However, no more invitations to that Pamela Richardson minx – oh sure, we’re on equitable terms for now, but she better watch her step!


--Pam
http://myspace.com/pammysongs