By Fiona Campbell-Howes

February 16th, 2007

YourSpace or mine?

YourSpace or mine?

‘I saw your face in a crowded place, and I don’t know what to do‘, whined squaddie-turned-popstar James Blunt in the inexplicably popular ‘You’re Beautiful’.

Oh, James. Did no one tell you about MySpace? As this San Francisco Chronicle article notes, Web 2.0 has somewhat altered the playing field regarding affairs of the heart.

It would only have required a little light stalking on Blunt’s part to find out the girl’s name. A quick Google search might turn up her MySpace page, which would inform him of her likes and dislikes and who she likes to hang out with.

Assuming she’s a classy chick, her MySpace page might link to a proper blog, perhaps written with Blogger or LiveJournal. Here the hapless James could find out what she eats for breakfast, what she watched on telly last night, and what her cats look like. He might scour her Flickr stream for photos of her laughing in sun-dappled meadows, and check out her last.fm profile to see what music she’s listening to right now.

(Hopefully not his!, you cry, sensibly.)

Having absorbed months or even years of her personal history, our hero might start to engage the young lady in conversation via witty, delicately flattering blog comments. After a suitably decorous period, he might email her at the address in her sidebar. At length they might move to instant messaging, for hours of unchaperoned flirting.

After weeks or months, they might arrange to meet up to see if they like each other in real life. She might no longer be quite such a mysterious angel, but there might be half a chance of it leading to something meaningful. And half a chance that Blunt might not inflict any more icky lovesick maunderings on the music-buying public.

Which, frankly, would be for the best.