If you can't beat them, join them. If you can't join them, make your own instead

Yep, don't bother trying to "spread yourself virally" across the likes of Myspace, when you can get your Adware kicks on extremely low budget Social Networking sites like the one covered here.

Now, I don't know about you but using "lol" in your domain name is never a particularly brilliant move, because it kind of reminds people of, you know, illegal pr0n. By and large, five minutes trawling the web teaches you that anything with the letters "lol" in the URL needs to be avoided like the plague.

However, some crazy fool decided to call his site...oh, Dear God....."Mylol.net" (surely they could have come up with something a little less panic inducing?) and base a poor man's Myspace around it instead. Assuming you haven't already called the police over the frankly terrifying domain name (which harbours nothing illegal, I might add. I just think it's a dreadful choice of name), the site itself is pretty threadbare and spectacularly useless. I've seen quite a few of these lately, so I can only assume it's some hot new wave of "these'll make money, lol" ideas.

With that in mind (and wanting to learn more about this brand new dawn of Internet 2.0) I asked my new pal Zongo what he thought:

Zongo says: HELLO! ME AM ZONGO! MMM, ME LOVE CONTENT ECONOMY!

ME DANCE LIKE SEXY ADWARE MOFO!

......awesome.

With the words "content economy" rattling around my brain, I signed up to the service to see exactly what was on offer.

"Get ready for some FUN!", the signup page screams. Sadly, gouging my eyeballs out with chopsticks then attempting to flick them at old people from the top of an exploding double decker bus would prove to be more fun than this website.

Before you can sign up, it asks how old you are - the T&C page demands you're over 18 years of age. Yet strangely, it'll let you through even if you say you're not because inside there's about six billion 15 year olds (their profile previews proudly declare their age - don't worry, you'll get to see a screenshot of these hot young studs later). Awesome coding there, guys.

Once you're in, you can...er....well, you can.....um...bare with me a minute, I'll just go check what you can do. In the meantime, have another natter with Zongo.

HELLO! ME AM ZONGO! ME AM LOVING VALUE PROPOSITION OF THIS SITE!

WHEN ME GROW UP, ME AM MAKING MANY SITES LIKE THIS ONE!

ME AM WANTING TO BE LIKE ME HERO! HIM GOOD!



................okay, so I checked and you can do something that begins with "Jack". You can probably guess the second part of the phrase. But for what it's worth, remember that crummy screenshot at the start of the writeup? Well, everyone with an account gets a homepage that, er, looks like that. It's okay - don't be too dazzled, the best is yet to come. You can - get this - leave messages on other people's pages and get "popularity points" for doing so. And when I say that's about all you can do with the site, I'm not kidding. But now, onto the FUN part.

When you're logged in and staggering about the member's area (no doubt screaming WHY GOD, WHY), you'll see this as you scroll down.

.....hooray, Zango content! So basically, we have a craptacular Social Networking-lite effort that provides you with - well, nothing at all, actually - in return for trying to get you to install Zango Adware. Remember, though the site says you have to be over eighteen, this is seemingly not enforced in the slightest - yet you have to be over eighteen to install the Zango Adware.

Click here and THINK OF THE CHILDREN. As you can see, it's not exactly difficult to deduce there are users under eighteen on this site. That screenshot is the FIRST PAGE OF USERS, so you don't need to be Batman to find them. Yet their profiles continue to exist. Strange, that.

As the blurb says, "The most funny video clips ever seen. Throw a big HAHA!"

...yes, get throwing. Especially as the clips are AUDIO FILES and not videoclips.

Doh.

I must say, it's a pretty nifty way for Zango to get themselves distributed on the pigtails of the Social Networking explosion. After all, people like me will continue to whinge while they're hawking it up on something like Myspace. But honestly, who's going to know - let alone care - if they're being peddled on some throwaway website with a design budget of ten pence or less?

Of course, I'll whinge anyway, especially as this site offers you LESS than you are being offered from someone like Myspace and THEY won't push Adware at you either!

Honestly, these sites get worse. Coming next week: Completely blank page offers Adware install in return for you pretending there's a site there.

Oh wait, we just did that one...