Although with the kind of coverage it gets in the mainstream media, you might think it is.  Yes, MySpace is the favourite punching bag of many an online blog and journalist for many reasons: its hideous design, the vacuous commenters,and the widespread commercialization of the network, and so on.

But as Darnell Clayton at the BlogHerald notes, the enormous breadth of the site does have its uses.  He relates:

Although I will not go into personal details here, the general gist of the story is that I had several family members who lost contact with our general “family tribe” after a disaster struck their home via fire. Since technology was not as organized as it was today (this was years before Google was even an afterthought) we lost contact with them as people relocated all over the country.

After a decade and a half of family reunions on various sides of the family, a bright cousin decided to conduct a random search for our missing relative via MySpace, since virtually “everyone had a page” online (at least in America).

After typing in their name, they were able to locate our missing relatives and after a quick exchange of calls, our family was reintroduced to the missing blood lines, making next years family reunion a little bit more interesting.

Yes, while the breadth of the network has the potential for many abuses, it clearly has its potential for connecting individuals like this as well; when social networks get that sort of critical mass, they truly get useful.  And when they get to the size of MySpace as it is right now, as perhaps, the network inside AOL once was, you start getting mega-network effects, where improbable connections start getting quite probable.

And in light of the kind of media coverage this mega network gets, its nice to hear a positive story for a change.

Thanks Darnell.