Crimson Media Lab

I have finally ventured into the land of myspace and facebook, although the profiles I built are for HRC Boston.

I intend to spend more time on these sites, but, I have to say, I will always prefer face to face contact when meeting people.

I am endlessly fascinated by the popularity of these sites–it is such a phenomenon on one level and then on another level it really was bound to happen eventually. The Berkman Center, (the Group at Harvard that provided me with this blog) had been exploring online social networking well before myspace took off.
I am also amused at the businesses that have popped up just to help people design their myspace pages, and I bet they are quite successful.

It makes me wonder–if I was going to build a social networking web site–how would I want it to be… myspace has such a simple web design really–it is amazing how popular it is. They do get the functionality of their design right and also they got the right people in the beginning, too. As I understand it, myspace became hugely popular initially because pop stars and models had myspaces, which drew in all their fans who wanted myspaces, too. Pretty clever and especially appealing to us younger generations with so much time on our hands to play on the internet.

To me, facebook is really a model of clean, minimalist design. I am quite impressed by it.

I definitely find both myspace and facebook quite inspiring.

This summer has been pretty busy, and I have been having lots of fun. I’ve been biking up a storm, including several 80 mile bike rides. I also finished two more classes, and now I have three left. I moved to an awesome new apartment with cheaper rent and also redesigned two web sites. My volunteer work with HRC continues, and I just love the fabulous people I get to meet all the time as a result.

I met Cyndi Lauper this summer… that was fun 🙂

HBS is going well, too. We are getting a new Director for our department, and I am sure I will be working on some more great projects once they come in. I am part of such a great team at HBS. I’m really proud of all my co-workers because we have all worked together for five years now, and we have just gotten so good at what we do. They have taught me so much. I am also gearing up to co-chair the Harvard ABCD Design Group.