As you like it

In the ongoing battle between MySpace and Facebook, Facebook seems to be winning by a landslide. It has not been acquired by Murdoch, and it is where most people are migrating since it opened its doors to everyone and its architecture to innovative web companies .

Yet, today, as I was going through the NYT "Book review" section, I came upon this interesting op ed by Pagan Kennedy: " A space for us" (by which he means a space for us, authors and readers).

Apparently, there is on Myspace a very active, if small, community where authors can fine tune their (arguably fairly limited) PR abilities but also get to know their readers by reading their profile.

Note: To be fair, I have not checked to see if Facebook also has such an active literary scene.

Kennedy's op ed interestingly turns into a reflection upon the relationship between author and reader. Kennedy observes: "And so I have become my readers’ reader, and something about the reciprocity of this delights and scares me".

Kennedy also cites a fellow (published) author, Matt Haig who reports that he got compliments on his book from one of his readers claiming to be William Shakespeare. Matt Haig reports (via MySpace mail): "Shakespeare sent a message telling me how much he enjoyed my work. I returned the compliment and told him ‘King Lear’ was pretty good, too, and that I’m sure he has a solid career ahead of him.”