While being interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter concerning MySpace, Rupert Murdoch stated, "In a sense, we say we've got 30 million portals." In November 2005, MySpace.com boasted having 37 million registered users, growing at an unbelievable pace of 4 million new members per month. According to comScore, it ranked third in page views among all domains. Social networking sites are an interesting phenomenon on the Web.
In a sense, eBay ( www.ebay.com) is a social networking site that supports the gathering of consumer buyers and sellers. Epinions.com ( www.epinions .com) is a social networking site enabling consumers to share product reviews. Wikipedia ( www.wikipedia .org) is a social networking site focusing on the development of free open-source information and content. In MySpace.com, you create and maintain your own "portal," a sort of personal Web site.
In that portal, you create a personal page about yourself, sharing just about any information you care to. You can include photos, create a blog about a topic of interest, and establish relationships with other people in chat rooms. Beyond just personal social networking, MySpace is becoming the space for many types of businesses. Most notably, musicians and bands are using MySpace to post and sell music.
Over 660,000 musicians and bands maintain user profiles on MySpace. And those musicians aren't just limited to fledgling "wannabes." Madonna pursued an aggressive campaign at MySpace for her new album Confessions on a Dance Floor. Madonna even posted her own confessions on MySpace, describing how she loves to go through people's bags while they're not looking (and other questionable acts). Other MySpace users can watch Madonna's videos and even copy and paste them into their own profile sections. Television shows and movies are also jumping into MySpace. TV shows like Family Guy, The Man Show, and Kitchen Confi dential have a MySpace presence. Popular movies like Walk the Line and Saw II have their own space. Book publishers spend extensive time reading and reviewing self-print books written on MySpace.
Many people have found MySpace to be an excellent venue for self-publishing a book, getting people to read it, and getting publishers to take a look at their manuscripts. Many book publishers have profiles on MySpace and encourage authors to submit books and manuscripts there. Of course, there is also a dark side to MySpace. Recently, a man created a MySpace portal and used it to attract underage girls for the purpose to committing sexual acts with them. He was caught but not before making contact with several young girls.
Questions
1. Visit MySpace ( www.myspace.com). What process do you go through to create your own personal portal? Do you have to pay a fee? What information do you have to provide MySpace to create a personal portal?
2. Search for a "friend" on MySpace. How do you do this? What are the search criteria you can use?
3. Peruse the various blogs on MySpace. What seem to be the dominant blog topics? Did you find any blogs that are of questionable social value (according to your own ethics)? If so, what were the topics?
4. Search for your favorite garage band or perhaps a popular well-known band. What content were you able to find? Could you view a music video? If so, could you view the entire video or just a segment of it?
5. In your opinion, why have social networking sites grown in popularity? Do you have a MySpace profile? If so, why did you create it?
6. According to one account, MySpace is designed to be "unedited and democratic." But as you read above, MySpace has been used by pedophiles to attract young children. Should MySpace be completely uncontrolled and unedited? Does MySpace have a societal obligation to censor questionable content? In your view, what does "questionable content" mean?
7. A growing and significant competitor to MySpace is Cyworld ( www.cyworld.com). Visit Cyworld and compare it to MySpace. If you don't have an account at either and had to choose one, which would you choose and why? If you have a MySpace account, what features does Cyworld offer that are not present at MySpace? If you have a Cyworld account, what features does MySpace offer that are not present at Cyworld? Do you have an account at both? If so, why?