MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive network of photos, blogs, user profiles, groups, and an internal e-mail system. As of March 2006 it is the world's fifth most popular English-language website (according to Alexa Internet[1]). MySpace has outstripped competitors such as Friendster and LiveJournal to become the most popular English-language social networking website with higher traffic and over 64 million users. It is representative of teenage culture.
History
Prior to the creation of the current social networking website the MySpace.com domain name was registered to an online storage and file sharing firm. Registration was free and users were able to obtain a small disk quota which would gradually increase if they referred new members to the site. Due to slow service and a lack of revenue, the site shut down and sold all of its users' information in 2001 [2].
Prior to that use, MySpace.com was home to a web design firm. [3]
The current MySpace service was founded in July 2003 by Tom Anderson (who is an alumnus of both UC Berkeley and UCLA), the current president, Chris DeWolfe (a graduate of USC's Marshall School of Business), the current CEO, and a small team of programmers. It was partially owned by Intermix Media, which was bought in July 2005 for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises) [4]. In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene" [5].
The creators of Myspace have hosted many parties in Hollywood, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Hawaii, and McAllen, Texas to support the site.
MySpace is also home to various independent musicians, who post songs directly on their profile. These songs can also be uploaded onto other profiles. Because of the high popularity, mainstream musicians have entered this trend as well. CDs of independent music are sold in various establishments.
In February 2006, amateur filmaker David Lehre released a short film entitled MySpace: The Movie, which has quickly become an Internet phenomenon, registering over 6 million hits in the first three months following its release.
Also in this month, most of the BBC Radio 1 DJs have set up a profile and are mentioning it very frequently. This is somewhat controversial as the BBC usually avoids any mention of individual companies.
Contents of a MySpace profile
Screenshot of a typical MySpace profile: shown here the one belonging to MySpace founder
Tom Anderson.
Each profile contains two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet." Profiles also can contain sections about standard interests, such as music, television, books, and movies, as well as specific personal details, such as marital status, physical appearance, and income. Profiles also contain a blog. A part of customizing one's MySpace is uploading images onto their site. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page.
There is also a count of the friends the user has. A total of eight friends, or the "Top 8," is shown directly on the profile, with a link to view all of the user's friends. Below this is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments about the user for all viewers to read.
Myspace profile layouts can have the entire look changed with many different editors. You can change your "Top 8" to show any number of friends you like. You can create custom colors, background and foreground images, table style, scroll bar style and color, and various others. You can also add music to your page by visiting an artist's page and choosing a song from MySpace's music player.
Popularity
MySpace is undoubtedly the most popular "friendship and networking" website as of 2006. Similar sites have arisen and are also proving successful. The accounts are free, and this is a major factor when understanding their popularity. The site earns revenues through advertisements.
MySpace has also marked a revolution in "do it yourself HTML", as there are numerous MySpace website designer/creator applications, which are designed specifically for customizing users' websites to match their personality or interests.
Key features of most "friendship networking" sites (including MySpace) are:
- User-supplied support forum
- User-friendly
- Blogging
- Community forums
- Instant messaging
- Exchanging comments
- Writing a personal profile
- Adding photos
- Customizing the profile -- background color or images, music, photos
- Rating/ranking users based on their profile, pictures, and written personality
- Allowing users to add friends from other services
These services are fairly common among most social networking services.
Criticism of MySpace
Accessibility
There are often accessibility problems in accessing the website, stemming from the fact that MySpace is set up so that anyone can customize the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions. As most MySpace users are not skilled web developers, this sometimes causes problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles have been known to freeze web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos and flash in their profiles.
Not only do people have trouble accessing individual sites, but the MySpace homepage often takes too long to load, only partially loads, or has a sign up from "Tom" saying that MySpace is down and will be up shortly. Many users encounter problems involving logging on, uploading pictures, viewing profiles, signing off, signing up, and so on.
MySpace in educational settings
While such groups may be in violation of MySpace agreements, little is done to eliminate groups dedicated to the slandering of people of different races, and bullying remains a problem. Many schools and public libraries in the US and the UK have begun to restrict access to MySpace because it has become "such a haven for student gossip and malicious comments"[6]. Although, in some schools, students can still access MySpace using web proxies, which often starts a race between administrators, who block the proxies, and students, who keep finding new proxies to use. Some private schools, particularly those with a religious base, have even attempted to ban their pupils from accessing MySpace at home[7]. Anybody who violates this policy in this setting would have an automatic suspension.
On November 7, 2005 only 400 out of 3,000 students of Warren High School in San Antonio, Texas showed up after two male students posted that they were going to bring guns to school. The threat was seen by officials and the students were arrested before anything could happen [8]. Such threats are not uncommon on MySpace. There have been many similar, less-publicized situations involving high-school students making threats that tend to be less serious. In 2006, a Kentucky chemistry teacher was suspended from teaching after school officials discovered she had a MySpace and used it to communicate with students.
Controversies
MySpace has been criticised by the media due to some members posting nude or indecent pictures of themselves, in violation of the MySpace Terms of Service [9]. Recently there have been a number of criminal cases concerning such materials; authorities once shut the site down to investigate it in more detail. Such images, as well as the level of profanity in some sections of the site have led some US schools and corporations to block access to MySpace [10].
There are also cases of adults using MySpace to find, meet, and stalk young teenagers. Such cases are typically the result of the victim displaying personal information on their profile unaware of the potential audience. Law enforcement is working to spread knowledge about this subject to users of social networking sites to help prevent cases in the future. These problems are not specific to MySpace, as any social-networking site can be used to find information about underage users, including but not limited to chat rooms, instant-messaging, blogs, and IRC. According to one of the leading internet privacy lawyers in the United States [citation needed], the incidents of stalkings, while real, are often overplayed in the media and are made to appear much more prevalent than they truly are.
Many of the responses to criticism have been just as controversial as the criticism itself. While many school districts choose simply to filter the site, others attempt to punish students for their comments posted on the site. When the student is being punished merely for comments, the ACLU and the EFF often become involved, seeing such punishments as a violation of students' free speech rights. Many of these cases are pending in lower courts. Although it should seem that comments at MySpace that are written as opinion should be considered protected speech, many expect the schools to claim the special rights that a courts have awarded to schools in acknowledgement of their parental delegate status.
"Stupidity"
MySpace is often ridiculed by more "elite" communities such as YTMND as being a breeding ground for "idiots". They back this up with examples such as most MySpace users' apparent poor typing ability, limited vocabulary, and poor skills in grammar. These stereotypes do not apply to all users, but are still commonly used to ridicule the site and its users.
Accusations of censorship
After News Corp's purchase of MySpace owner Intermix Media, the site has come under suspicion of censoring content. During January 2006, it was discovered that mentions of YouTube, another site for trading videos, as well as any links to videos from the site were being deleted. After 600 users made a forum to complain about the perceived act of censorship, the links were restored. The forum on which the 600 users complained about the problem, however, was shut down, raising the suspicions of some.[11]
Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson of conspiracy website Prison Planet have accused Rupert Murdoch of using his share in MySpace as a tool to censor the internet.[12] Jones has also founded his own MySpace site.[13] Because he already has four prominent websites (Prison Planet, Infowars, Jones Report and Propaganda Matrix) it can be assumed that the site is a test to see how far he can criticize the site before he is shut down.
See also
References
- ^ Alexa Internet Alexa Web Search - top 500 English-language websites. Retrieved March 4, 2006.
- ^ CNN, May 31, 2001. Online storage firm shutters file depot. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
- ^ Intermix Media, July 18, 2005. News Corporation to Acquire Intermix Media, Inc.. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
- ^ BBC News, January 24, 2006. MySpace looks to UK music scene. Retrieved January 24, 2006.
- ^ Kuro5hin, July 17, 2005. MySpace: A Place for Dolts. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
- ^ Slashdot, October 14, 2005. Cross-Site Scripting Worm Floods MySpace. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
- ^ Curriculum Review, October 2005. Schools race to restrict MySpace.
- ^ The Daily News, Washington, January 22, 2006. The MySpace case. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- ^ WOAI, November 11, 2005. Online Terror Thread Hits Local High School. Retrieved February 6, 2006.
- ^ The Capital, January 1, 2006. Web site gives raw look into the lives of area teenagers. Retrieved January 24, 2006.
- ^ Boston Globe, December 8, 2005. Website's power to overexpose teens stirs a warning. Retrieved January 24, 2006.
- ^ MSNBC Dateline, February 4, 2006. To Catch a Predator III. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace under GFDL
