MySpace

MySpace is a social networking website based in West Hollywood, California offering an interactive, user-submitted network of blogs, profiles, groups, photos, MP3s, videos and an internal e-mail system. According to Alexa Internet, as of August 2006, it is the world's fourth most popular English-language website and the seventh most popular in any languageAlexa Internet's top 500 English-language websites and top 500 global websites. Retrieved August 09, 2006.. It is the most popular site in the United States, accounting for 4.5% of all website visits (note it is possible that other sites have a greater number of unique visitors). MySpace has gradually gained more popularity than similar sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Xanga, MyYearbook, FriendsReunited.co.uk, Classmates.com and LiveJournal to achieve 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites. It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary pop culture, especially in the Anglosphere. MySpace has 300 employees, is owned by Newscorp, and does not disclose revenues or profits. MySpace currently reports just over 100 million members, with the 100,000,000th member signing up on August 9, 2006. The website also attracts 500,000 new members each week.

The creators of MySpace have hosted many parties in Hollywood, San Diego, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Hawaii, and McAllen, Texas to support the site. The headquarters is in Los Angeles, but the parent company is headquartered in New York City.

MySpace is also home to various independent musicians and independent filmmakers who upload songs and short films directly on their profile. These songs and films can also be embedded in other profiles, an interconnectedness which adds to MySpace's appeal for musicians and filmmakers alike. Because of the high popularity, mainstream musicians and filmmakers alike have continued this trend as well.

History

MySpace original logo.

Before the creation of the current social networking website, the MySpace.com domain name was registered in 1998 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 original site shut down and sold all of its users' information in 2001 .

The current MySpace service was founded in July 2003 by Tom Anderson (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) . In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene" .

On July 22, 2006, the MySpace servers encountered a major power outage . While visiting the temporarily-down website, visitors were given the opportunity to play Pac-Man using a Flash-based version of the game. This game also replaces the main page when the servers are down for regular maintenance.

Contents of a MySpace profile

Each profile contains two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also can contain sections about standard interests. Usually it's found under the "General" section of one's profile. A profile also contains under the "General" section, areas for specific personal details, such as Marital Status, Physical Appearance, and Income. However, these features have the ability of not being displayed on the page by simply not filling them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. MySpace has also added the option to upload videos that are played via a standalone Flash player.

Also displayed is a count of a user's friends, as well as a "Top Friends" area. Users can choose a certain number of friends to be displayed on their profile in the "Top Friends" area. The "Top Friends" used to be restricted to eight friends. People bypassed this limitation by using third-party tools to emulate a "Top X" friends. Currently, MySpace allows up to 24 friends to be displayed in the "Top Friends" area.

Below the "Top Friends" area (by default) is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. Although comments are publicly accessible, many users leave personal comments regardless, allowing any reader to know their business. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting.

MySpace profile layouts can have the entire look changed with HTML and/or CSS. Many different "MySpace editors" are available from other websites for those who do not know HTML. MySpace gives users some flexibility to modify their user pages. Using HTML and CSS, the vast majority of the profile can be changed to a user's preference. Users also have the option to add embedded music into their profiles via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs on their respective profiles. Videos and any other content can also be added.

Criticism of MySpace

Accessibility

There are sometimes accessibility problems on users' profiles, stemming from the fact that MySpace is set up so that anyone can customise the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions. As MySpace users may not be skilled web developers, this can cause some problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics and Flash in their profiles.
In addition, the MySpace community is growing. New features have been put on the page, such as video and song sharing, through streaming media. The unprecedented amount of MySpace users joining daily due to these new features, and its media publicity, means that more users are online at any given time. This increase in usage sometimes slows down the servers and may result in a "Server Too Busy" error message for some users who are on at peak hours, or a variety of any other error messages throughout the day.

MySpace is notorious for the degree of freedom it allows users, allowing them to add videos and songs to their profile, as well as allowing them to abuse HTML in nearly any way possible, provided that the advertisements aren't covered up by CSS or using other means. This freedom provided to the mainstream popularity that MySpace has earned in recent months has led to claims by MySpace detractors that the site encourages poor web design habits, as many MySpace pages are smothered in poorly-written HTML and, oftentimes, multiple videos and soundfiles playing at the same time, subsequently causing some viewers' browsers to crash.

MySpace in educational settings

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". Some private schools have even attempted to ban their pupils from accessing MySpace at home. In fall 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on MySpace or similar websites. The school claimed that this action was made to protect its students from online predators. Blogging ban provokes a debate over cyberspace: Pope John H.S. demands that online profiles end, calls forums havens for sexual predators, Daily Record, October 24, 2005

Recently, it has been reported that certain universities have begun searching MySpace in order to discover evidence of illegal drug and/or alcohol use among potential applicants.
In 2006, Del Mar Community College blocked all access to MySpace. Network administrators cited network strain from excessive MySpace traffic as the reason for blocking the social network. According to Del Mar's chief of technology, MySpace was consuming 40% of the college's daily internet bandwidth, impeding the college's web-based courses.

MySpace and businesses

Due to the high use of bandwidth and misuse of the computers in various retail stores, businesses are taking measures to block out the website to prevent customers from using their demonstration computers for personal purposes only. One such blocked site was MySpace Videos, which was blocked from a large collection of networks and universities, for creating an excessive amount of bandwidth usage from videos. Additionally, some routers are providing firmware updates that include the automatic banning of MySpace.
Companies with computers available for public use (like Apple Computer, in their Apple Stores) have sometimes prevented access to MySpace to prevent customers from using excessive bandwidth, although Apple Computer reversed its decision and now allows customers to visit MySpace.

MySpace and professionalism

The Chicago Tribune's RedEye printed an article concerning MySpace and an individual's search for employment. It was argued that young college graduates compromise their chances of starting careers because of the content they post on their accounts. For instance, a visitor does not need an account to browse for users using information that is readily available on resumes and applications, such as a ZIP code and age. A potential employer can utilize information provided by the applicant on MySpace's browse component. Thus, the employer may not hire a highly qualified candidate because he or she maintains an account suggesting rambunctious behavior. Moreover, employees were said to be putting their careers at risk because they maintain blogs that criticize their respective companies and organizations.

Security

MySpace allows registering users to be as young as 14. MySpace terms of service. Profiles with ages set to 14 to 15 years are automatically private. Users whose ages are set at 16 or over do have the option to restrict their profiles, as well as the option of merely allowing certain personal data to be restricted to people other than those on their "friends list". The full profile of or messaging someone under the age of 18 is restricted to their direct MySpace friends only.
As a result of negative publicity of MySpace, the Fox television network announced that they will post public service ads warning children of those dangers. Also, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has called on MySpace to raise the age limit of their users in order to better protect children by restricting their use. Republican Pennsylvania Representative Mike Fitzpatrick has also introduced legislation (H.R.5319) to ban usage of the site in public places, such as schools and libraries, and to have the power to tap into usage of the website in those places.
Recently, MySpace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace, and have been the target of online predators. In response, MySpace has given assurances to parents that the site is safe for people of all ages. Beginning in late June 2006, MySpace users over 18 could no longer be able to add users under 18 as friends unless they knew the user's full name and/or email address, and vice versa.

Musicians' rights and the user agreement

Until June 2006, there was a building and great concern amongst musicians, artists and bands on MySpace owing to the fine print within the user agreement that read, "You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services."

The fine print brought particular concern as the agreement was being made with Murdoch's News Corp. Songwriter Billy Bragg brought the issue to the attention of the media during the first week of June 2006. Jeff Berman, a MySpace spokesman swiftly responded by saying, "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends."

By June 27th, MySpace had lived up to their word and amended the user agreement with, "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose."

Social and cultural

Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 issue of Playboy magazine, related his experiences experimenting with membership in MySpace. Among his criticisms are that the distance afforded by the Internet emboldens members, such as females who feature photos of themselves in little clothing on their profile pages, to behave in ways that they would not behave in person, and that this duplicity undercuts the central philosophy of MySpace, which is to bring people together. Itzkoff also references the addictive, time-consuming nature of the site, mentioning that Playboy Playmate and MySpace member Julie McCullough, who was the first to respond to his Add request, refers to the site as "cybercrack". Itzkoff claims that MySpace gives many people access to a member's life, without giving the time needed to maintain such relationships, and that such relationships do not possess the depth of in-person relationships.

Itzkoff is particularly critical of the disturbing and fraudulent behavior of people who can contact a member, unsolicited, as when he was contacted by someone expressing a desire to socialize and date, but whose blog (to which Itzkoff was directed via subsequent emails) turned out to be a solicitation for a series of commercial porn sites. Itzkoff is also critical of more subtle commercial solicitations on the site, such as the banner ads and links to profiles and video clips that turn out to be commercials for new 20th Century Fox films. Itzkoff also observes that MySpace's much-celebrated music section is heavily weighted in favor of record labels rather than breakthrough musicians.

Itzkoff also relates criticism from another person he calls "Judas", who asserts that while the goal of attempting to bring together people who might not otherwise associate with one another in real life may seem honorable, it violates a social contract that exists when people interact in person, which render MySpace nothing more than a passing fad:

"There will come a moment when, like deer quivering and flicking up their ears toward a noiseless noise in the woods, the first adopters will suddenly realize they're spending their time blogging and adding and gawking at the same alarming photos an army of 14-year olds are and, quick as deer, they'll dash to the next trend. And before you know it, we'll all follow."

Legal issues

In a separate incident, two New York City teenagers were charged with computer hacking and attempted extortion of MySpace, after both had hacked into the user database and stolen personal information, and threatened to share the process of breaking in, unless MySpace paid them $150,000 in US dollars. Both teens were arrested by undercover Los Angeles detectives, posing as MySpace employees.

On July 28 2006, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill banning the use of social networking sites such as MySpace in public locations (e.g. libraries). The law is known as the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA).

MySpace celebrities

MySpace has led to the creation of MySpace celebrities, popular individuals who have attracted hundreds of thousands of "friends", which may lead to coverage in other media. The June 2006 issue of Playboy magazine, for example, featured a "Women of MySpace" nude pictorial (though ironically, an article somewhat critical of the website ran in the same issue). Through MySpace, such people are able to distribute information regarding their activities, events they are hosting, or projects they are working on (e.g. albums or clothing lines). Though some of these individuals have remained only Internet celebrities, others have been able to jump to television, magazines, and radio. Examples include Christine "ForBiddeN" Dolce's appearance on The Tyra Banks Show and Tila Tequila's covers for Stuff & Maxim magazines.Furthermore, MySpace's music section has helped many amateur bands progress. One illustrative example is English band Arctic Monkeys, who owe some of their success to the publicity that MySpace generated for them. When asked about the popularity of the band's MySpace site in an interview with Prefix magazine, the band pointed out that they did not even know what MySpace was, and that their page had originally been created by their fans. Pop artist Lily Allen's new fame is also due in part to her being promoted on MySpace. Also, G4's hit show Attack of the Show! has a "MySpace Girl of the Week" segment.

Rivalry with YouTube

YouTube first appeared on the web in early 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on MySpace due to MySpace members who embedded YouTube videos in their MySpace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new MySpace Videos service, MySpace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. MySpace users widely protested the ban, prompting MySpace to re-enable embedded YouTube videos shortly thereafter. With the popularity of the site growing day to day, there are some media outlets that have chosen to create pages to promote their existence. With the coming of two brand new television broadcast networks, The CW and My Network TV (which MySpace parent News Corporation also owns), getting the word out about the new networks is also a reason that media outlets, and even some local televison stations, choose to create pages. Examples of television stations that have made pages on the website include: KASY and KWBQ (from Albuquerque, New Mexico), WBUW (from Madison, Wisconsin), and three stations from South Texas: KRIS, KDF, and The CW South Texas. There are also two stations in Washington State that have pages: KXMN (from Spokane), and KSTW (from Seattle). Another media outlet, The Daily Buzz newscast also has a page. As well as radio station personalities having MySpace profiles, several radio stations also have MySpace pages.

References

External links

*MySpace.com MySpace Homepage
*Tom Anderson MySpace Founder Homepage

MySpace: Encyclopedia BETA

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