Thanks for the Add and the Comments That Filled Every Profile

Thanks for the add was the polite thing to write on someone's MySpace profile after they accepted your friend request, and for a few years it was one of the most common sentences on the internet. Profile comments sat in a box near the bottom of every page, newest on top, and anyone who visited could read them. People left typed notes and inside jokes, plus huge pasted pictures that said things like "Have a great weekend!" in sparkly letters. The comment box was half guest book and half public chat. For a lot of people it was the first thing they checked after logging in.

The box at the bottom of the page

A MySpace profile had two columns. The left side held your picture and your interests. The right had your blurbs and your Top 8, and below that came your friends' comments. Each one showed the friend's name and picture next to the message, plus when it was posted.

Since every visitor could read them, comments were a little like a performance. You weren't only talking to your friend. You were talking to everyone who would scroll down their page later that week, from their crush to their cousins to the kid from second period who checked everybody's page.

Lots of profiles showed a count at the top of the box, something like "Displaying 50 of 1,284 comments." That number said a lot. A high count meant you were popular, or at least that your friends liked pasting things.

What did "thanks for the add" mean?

"Thanks for the add" meant "I saw you accepted my friend request, and I appreciate it." It was the standard first comment after two people became friends, especially if they didn't really know each other yet. A band would write it to every new fan. Someone from your new school would write it to break the ice. Sometimes it was the only thing two people ever said to each other.

There were variations. "Thanks for the add, love the layout" was the friendly upgrade, and "TFTA" was the lazy one. Bands often added a link to their show dates or asked you to put their song on your profile.

Then you were supposed to write back on their page, and the whole thing went back and forth for a while.

Everyone also had at least one friend they never asked for. When you signed up, MySpace added Tom, one of the site's founders, as your first friend automatically. You could delete him, but most people left him there, smiling in a white T-shirt in front of a whiteboard. You can read more about him in whatever happened to MySpace and Tom.

Picture comments and the copy and paste code

MySpace didn't store pictures for comments. Instead, people pasted a bit of HTML, usually an image tag that pointed to a picture saved somewhere else, and the picture showed up inside the comment.

Whole sites existed just to hand out these codes. You picked a graphic, copied the code from a little text box and pasted it into your friend's comment box.

The graphics had their own style: glitter letters, sparkly hearts and cartoon kittens, plus flashing "Happy Friday!" banners and pictures of hot cocoa for winter. Every holiday had a set. On Halloween, everyone's page filled up with spinning pumpkins. On Valentine's Day it was pink hearts, often from people who were just being nice. If you liked that look on your own page too, there's more in glitter graphics.

Most of those pictures lived on free image sites. When a site moved its files or stopped allowing outside linking, old comments filled up with broken image icons and little gray boxes. Plenty of old profiles still look that way in screenshots, and why Photobucket pictures broke explains the rest.

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Comment etiquette nobody wrote down

There were rules, even if nobody ever posted them. If someone commented on your page, you commented on theirs. Answering on your own page made no sense, because the other person would never see it unless they came back to look. So conversations bounced between two profiles, one message on each. Reading them later meant clicking back and forth.

You didn't leave the same pasted picture on someone's page twice in a row, and you didn't leave a sad comment where everyone could see it. If someone had just changed their layout or their profile song, you were supposed to say something about it.

Some people turned on a setting that held new comments until they approved them. That kept spam and drama off the page, though your comment sat in a waiting line while your friend decided if it was okay.

Spam and comment chains

As MySpace got huge, the comments got crowded. In August 2006, the site reached its 100 millionth account, and lots of those accounts belonged to bands and promoters, and to spammers. A band trying to get noticed might leave the same "thanks for the add, check out our new song" on hundreds of pages in a night.

There were also chain comments. These were long pasted messages that told you to repost them on 10 friends' pages, or something bad would happen. Others promised your crush would message you by midnight if you posted them on their page. They worked about as well as the old chain emails did, which is to say not at all.

Things people remember

• Hitting Post and seeing "Your comment is pending approval"
• A friend leaving the same comment on every page in their Top 8 at once
• Picture comments so big they stretched the whole layout sideways
• Checking a friend's comments to see who they had been talking to
• Deleting an embarrassing comment from your mom before anyone saw it
• Holiday comment graphics that played music on top of the profile song

Comments on FriendCrib

FriendCrib has a comment box on every crib, and friends can leave notes the old way. It's still a public place to say hi, so the same unwritten rules apply. Write back on their page. Say something nice about the new layout, and go easy on the glitter. If you don't have a crib yet, make one and start collecting comments of your own.

Somewhere there is still a crib with a sparkly kitten and a "thanks for the add" sitting at the top of the comment box, and the person who left it is probably wondering if you ever wrote back.