MySpace, YourSpace, We All Scream for OurSpace

So, cool, right, Jenny Lewis played (with the Watson Twins) in Silverlake adjacent on Thursday night. And not only can you get a little bit of Rilo Kiley at the Vista Theatre, but you can check out the show online at their web site.

But wait! It's not their web site...its a damn myspace page. And Jenny Lewis DOES, in fact, have a web site. And its well designed. And well updated. And musically rich. (but, no blog or other social-networking stuff.)

So does everyone have a MySpace now?

It sure seems like it. And the phenomenon seems especially insidious among the LA music set. Even K-Fed and Carson Daly seem to think its the next big thing.

For instance, Indie 103.1's The Red Zone. it's the best show on the station — the one that Ruth Seymour should consider transporting over to KCRW — and it goes on and on about how all its playlists and junk are wired. On MySpace.

So here's the question: What the heck is up with MySpace? Can some MySpace-aphile out there explain to us here at LAist why Rupie paid $600 million for the thing?

We're not asking the business-sense question, ala, "why did ebay pay $2 billion for skype" when a successful online auction site seems like it should have no use for an immature internet telephony provider.

No. We're asking why MySpace even exists.

Puh-leeze! Set up your own web site. It ain't that hard. And it doesn't cost that much. Doesn't good web design mean anything anymore?

Seriously, traveling around the MySpace-verse makes us long for the days of 2400 baud and Dope Wars. Even the blandness of Zork text beats HTML blink and center tags.