Thursday, May 25, 2006

MySpace is Slow !

Anyone who used MySpace knows that at times it can be very slow. I'd like to blame it on the fact that MySpace uses some Microsoft ISS servers but surely this isn't the entire reason.

Some time ago MySpace was bought by News Corp (owner of Fox News) for about $500 million dollars, that's some web site ! There is no doubt MySpace generates alot of money from ads since each page host about three ads or more. Given that MySpace is primarily a revenue generating venture I'm left wondering why it remains so slow sometimes.

Now granted MySpace isn't slow for everyone. I have a friend who claims MySpace has never been slow for him. But let's be clear on one thing : it has nothing to do with connection speed. My friend has a similar internet connection to the one I'm on now which is residential cable modem service which gets above 1 megabit a second.

I highly doubt my 1 megabit cable modem connection is the cause of MySpace being slow sometimes. I've also used MySpace on a residential DSL line which gets about 40 KB a second. Now 40 KB/second isn't blazing fast but it should (and is) plenty fast to browse the web.

It's true that MySpace host massive databases for all the features they offer but so do a lot of web sites. And given that MySpace is a half a billion dollar investment you'd think someone would have already resolved this whole slowness issue.

And this is just covering the slowness.

I could do a whole separate article on the random errors MySpace generates when viewing profiles, leaving comments and so on. This also isn't covering the frequent unscheduled maintenance MySpace undergoes. More than a few times I've clicked a profile only to be told it's "undergoing maintenance". Or the countless times bulletins have been down while they "fix" something.

If my memory serves me right MySpace has been around for about three years. So three years and half a billion dollars later MySpace just can't seem to resolve their database and server issues.
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