Summary

I think my summary of my Myspace interaction less resembles a synopsis of things experienced over a 6 week period,l but rather represents the standard set of experiences for millions of people across the globe daily.

I generally keep my profile up to date; I comment on my friends pages every now and then; I’ll check out new photos and read new bulletin posts; and I feel that my profile represents me without going into the nitty-gritty. But it has not taken me away from my “real life”, as critics would suggest

Ultimately Myspace enhances my existing relationships, but doesn’t not form the basis of any new ones. It’s a tool to help continue and build upon existing friendship, nothing more.

Although it has the ability to create connections with those otherwise un-connectable, in my experience, it generally isn’t used in that way.

But as online social networking seems to be here to stay (whether on Myspace or not), perhaps the future will be more globalised, more interconnected, more socially networked.

And perhaps we will look back and say that Myspace was the catalyst.

Week 6 - The Future of Myspace

In general, the Internet and World Wide Web is one of the only media outlets in a constant state of change. It is never static – that is why we have sites such as the Wayback Machine.

Myspace will have to keep updating, keep expanding, and keep bettering itself to continue to be relevant. It’s newest and biggest rival, Facebook, has begun to take a lot of the limelight, and with some validity.

Facebook’s selling-point is its user-friendliness, a quality which Myspace has been sorely lacking. I opened a Facebook account at the start of this project to be able to compare the two, and I found the ease-of-use leaps and bounds above Myspace. With fewer clicks it’s easier to perform and action or access information.

Thankfully, Myspace hasn’t simply rolled over, and, as I spoke about in the update of my first entry, has made some usability changes, which I applaud. Perhaps, with it’s coupling of newfound user-friendliness and personalization, Myspace could still remain on top.

But ultimately, regardless of whether it’s Facebook or Myspace or another platform, online social networking is here to stay. As I interacted, I found old friends I had fallen out of contact with, new ways to express my personality, and new ways in interact with my offline friends. I also found access to a whole host of different information, whether it be about new and upcoming bands or events I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. The interconnectedness of the whole experience opens windows of information and communication you simply can’t access anywhere else.

I firmly believe online social networking will become part of our culture, in a similar way that cars have become part of out culture. We don’t just “go for a drive” as a novelty, we use cars to enhance our lives. In the same way, we won’t go online to “go Myspacing”, Myspace is simply there and part of the experience.

Although new issues such as privacy will and are being raised, online social networking will expand and become part of our cultural identity for the better.

The future is bright!

Quoted Links

• http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Further Reading

• http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/03/your_take_roundupmyspace_over.html
• http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/11027.asp
• http://www.news.com/Social-networks-future-portal-or-fad/2100-1038_3-6083546.html

Week 5 - Privacy and Security

A lot of talk has circulated since Myspace’s beginnings about privacy and security, as well as the influence interaction with Myspace has on young people.

In June 2006, a Deputy Sheriff in Florida was fired for posting "inappropriate information" on his profile page. (Ives, 2006). Other instances of people being fired because of their Myspace pages and/or activity abound (Porter, 2007) and(Weboptimiser.com, 2005). It raises two questions – “Should employers be able to check up and even fire workers based on their Myspace Profiles?” and “Do people not realize that their profiles are public?”!

I tired to approach the first question from two angles – as an employee, and as an employer.

As an employee, it would make me uncomfortable to think my boss is “checking up on me”. It doesn’t relate to work, and therefore shouldn’t be of any interest to my employer. Although I don’t believe my profile has anything negative or incriminating, I think the general feeling is that your profile is yours, personal.

But in reality it’s in public space, and as an employer I’d think that entitles me to be able to look at it. I think this point is one which most people miss. Why shouldn’t an employer looking to hire someone be able to check an applicants Myspace page? It’s going to give them a more realistic view then a glossed-up résumé.

Myspace have realized that a number of users want to be exclusive about who views their profile pages (as well as reacting to bad press around privacy). There is the included option to block a users profile from public eyes: the user has to approve a profile view (Myspace.com, 2007[2]). They also have “Safety Tips” which encourage people to be wary of what they post (Myspace.com, 2007[1]).

When I first opened my profile I had set it to “public”. After a few months changed it to “private”. I found that my social networking focused on my existing “real world” friendships and I was not interacting with unknown people I had added to my friend list. Also, spam emails and friendship requests abounded. I found that the change of security status solved these problems.

References & Quoted Links

• Ives, M. (2006). Deputy fired for MySpace.com postings. Available: http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060621/NEWS/60621003/1001/NEWS01. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• Porter, J. (2007). Woman Denied Degree because of MySpace Profile Pic. Available: http://bokardo.com/archives/woman-denied-degree-because-of-myspace-profile/. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  
  
• Weboptimiser.com. (2005). AAA workers fired over MySpace messages. Available: http://www.weboptimiser.com/search_engine_marketing_news/15018570.html. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  
  
• Myspace.com. (2007). Safety Tips. Available: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.viewpage&placement=safetytips. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  

• Myspace.com. (2007). How do I set my profile to private? . Available: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.faq&Category=6&Question=42. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

Week 4 - Corporate Interest and Advertising

In July of 2005, Rupert Murdoc’s News Corp. bought Myspace for US$580 million (BBC News, 2007). This was one of the first big Internet company buyouts following the “dot com crash” (Investopedia, 2006). It was followed by the likes of Google buying Youtube (The Associated Press, 2006) and more recently Microsoft buying a stake in Facebook (BBC News,2007[2]).

In anyone’s language, $580 million is a lot of money to pay for a website. But Myspace isn’t really any old website; statistics reveal the site gets more than 1 billion views per day (Guthrie, 2006).

With that many people visiting the same place every day, Mysapce.com is very lush ground for advertising, and the number one reason for Murdoc’s buyout. He claims that the website is now worth 10 times what he paid for it in 2005. (Meyer, 2006)

And adverting sure is prevalent on Myspace. With banner ads, “Myspace music exclusives", “Myspace specials”, and sponsored links, it’s down right impossible to escape without resorting to installing ad-blocking software into your browser, which I recently have done.

I have found that this form of advertising has been one of the most annoying and frustrating aspects of my interaction with Myspace. Brightly coloured, moving and noisy Flash-based ads seem to be on every page, and are very distracting. Before installing ad-blocking software, I found I would quickly tire of accidentally rolling over an ad and having it scream catchphrases at me. It brought down my entire experience.

The most annoying thing is that Internet based advertising doesn’t have to be done in this form. I find Google’s text-based advertisements remarkably more tasteful and appealing. (http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Google-revs-up-profits-as-advertising-revenues-soar/2007/10/19/1192301041298.html). The noise and movement of Myspace’s Flash ads may be more eye-catching, but they work against themselves – I don’t want whatever’s being sold if it’s being sold like that!

There is another form of advertising on Myspace that doesn’t directly profit Murdoc’s News Corp; profiles set up as advertising are becoming more common. This method is called “Viral marketing” (marketingterms.com, 2007), where companies set up profiles for their brand which are added as “Friends” by Myspace users. The hope is that the viral profile will continue to be added as “Friends” through social networks, like something would be passed around by “word of mouth” outside of the digital world. I recently set up a profile with this intent for one of my friend’s businesses, http://www.myspace.com/elohimdesigns.

Another similar method is to create faux-personal profiles of people using or engaging with the product or service being advertised. Lingerie brand Elle McPherson Intimates has done this reasonably successfully with it’s (Gordon-MacIntosh, 2007).

Both viral methods are cheap and effective marketing, and is being seen more commonly around Myspace. Movies, events, and brands – all have their own profiles, and what brand profiles you have listed as friends can often be read by other users as an indicator of personality.

References & Quoted Links

• BBC News. (2005). News Corp in $580m internet buy. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4695495.stm. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• BBC News. (2007). Microsoft buys stake in Facebook. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7061042.stm. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  
  
• Gordon-MacIntosh, J. (2007). Elle McPherson Campaign. Available: http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround/2007/08/elle-mcpherson-.html. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• Guthrie, S. (2006). Handling 1.5 Billion Page Views Per Day Using ASP.NET 2.0. Available: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/03/25/441074.aspx. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  
  
• Investopedia. (2006). Crashes: The Dotcom Crash. Available: http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes8.asp. Last accessed 2 November 2007.
  
  
• marketingterms.com. (2007). Viral Marketing. Available: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/. Last accessed 27 October 2007.
  
  
• Meyer, A. (2006). News Corp: MySpace Worth $6 Billion. Available: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/15/news-corp-myspace-worth-6-billion/. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• Sydney Morning Herald. (2007). Google revs up profits as advertising revenues soar.27 October 2007. Available: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Google-revs-up-profits-as-advertising-revenues-soar/2007/10/19/1192301041298.html. Last accessed

• The Associated Press. (2006). Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. Available: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• http://www.myspace.com/elohimdesigns

• http://www.myspace.com/intimatedrummergirl

Week 3 – Social Interaction

This week I take a more personal look into how Myspace has changed, enhanced and/or hindered my social interaction.

Like I said in my first entry, I’ve had my Myspace account open since mid-2006. It’s worth stating that I deferred Uni in ‘06, and had a little bit more time on my hands then many of my High School friends. Myspace was an ideal means for me to stay in contact with those friends when it became increasingly harder to stay in touch.

Comments (one on one messages posted publicly on profile pages) and bulletins (messages to all Myspace friends), although drastically less personal then face-to-face interaction or phone calls, seemed to keep up that connection when otherwise it would have been lost. It was also marginally faster then writing an email, and the fact that you had to view a friends profile page to comment added a personal touch to the communication.

Unfortunately over time, as the “real-world” friendships naturally drifted apart, so did the Myspace interaction. This sheds a light on the basis of my Myspace usage: it is built upon existing social networks.

Of my 118 friends, 84 are people I know or have known in the past. 32 are bands, organizations etc., and only 2 are people I haven’t at one time met offline.

And (using a Myspace bulletin to collect data) I’m not the only one to have a strong bias towards existing friends. One of my friends states that “on myspaz i have 132 [friends] or something? and then i think maybe 25ish i have never met. incl. bands” (Taylor, 2007)

Although Myspace has enhanced and built upon existing social networks, it hasn’t added anybody new. In fact, it is reliant on those existing social networks; without them, I really doubt my interaction would continue.

Comparatively, Facebook’s system of social networking completely disregards the “internet only” friends, and only encourages existing networks.( Sullivan, M. (2007), pg 33)

References

• Sullivan, M. (2007). Facebook Versus Myspace. PCWorld Magazine. October 2007, 32 - 33.
  
  
• Taylor, C (2007), Available: http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/637/myspace01db2.jpg

Week 2 – Customization & Personality

One of the key selling points of social networking sites in general is the users ability to express themselves and their personality online. Through listing their favorite bands to the photo they choose as their profile picture, there are a lot of ways for you modify who you are on the internet

Myspace’s abundance of ways to update and change your profile has been one of it’s biggest selling points. You can upload pictures, change your status to reflect your mood, add your favorite band’s songs…etc. But the most common way to express yourself is ironically not directly supported by Myspace.com.

By the use of HTML and CSS coding languages, users can change their profile’s background, content boxes, fonts, colours, pictures and a whole host of other options. I have updated my profile layout around 3 – 5 times since it’s creation, mostly due to changing tastes, or simply out of boredom.

This ability to change your profile has created an opportunity for thousands and thousands of profile code generating websites. A Google search for “Myspace profile editor” returns over 3 million sites (Google Search, 2007).

Recently, more advanced code generators such as lovemyflash.com, which offer Flash-based upgrades have begun to pop up. It’s getting serious!

The irony comes in the fact that although Myspace allows users to change and modify their profile’s content (as long as they don’t cover up the advertisements (Myspace.com, 2007), they do not have any systems in place to do this in-house. They do not have their own generators, and ignore any inquiries about coding issues.

Surely this service would be unbelievably beneficial to users, not to mention profitable to Myspace itself as users would be staying on the website and viewing more advertisements (instead of the plethora of advertisements on the various code-generating websites).

Still, Myspace continues to gain users wishing to express themselves online. But what makes us want to express ourselves?

I believe that in the individualistic culture we live in, having a personalized online profile is another expression of the self. And Myspace freely allow that expression. You can put anything and everything on your profile you wish, as long as it doesn’t include any offensive material (pornography etc.).

I think this expression of the self is why so many of today’s youth sign up to Myspace. It gives them the freedom to express themselves in ways they may not be able to at school or at home. And it’s all free, another big selling point.

Myspace has realized that they cater to a younger audience and often advertises and shapes its content to this target demographic.

In the end, this youth-based culture may work against Myspace. As social networking becomes the norm and older generations begin to invest themselves, Myspace may loose these new users who are looking for more adult interaction and an ease-of-use that Myspace currently lacks. I myself have been constantly frustrated by the clunky user interface. I recently opened a Facebook account, and although approaching it from a different angle and offering different services, it is a whole lot easier to use.

On the other hand, perhaps if Myspace focuses more directly on a younger audience and let old users go to Facebook and co, it may further increase its hold on the youth market.

Only time will tell.

Update October 16
As mentioned in the previous week’s update, Myspace have made some radical changes. I find the new interface a lot more user friendly. Myspace deserve some credit, although they seem to have taken a lot of ideas from its rival Facebook.

References & Quoted Links

• Google Search, myspace profile editor, Available: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=myspace+profile+editor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• Myspace.com. (2007). MySpace.com Terms of Use Agreement. Available: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms. Last accessed 27 October 2007.

• http://www.lovemyflash.com/

Week 1 – My Profile History, Social Networking’s Past & Recent Trends

With a few clicks, I find that I opened my Myspace account on the 23^rd of May 2006, at 9:14 PM. I’d forgotten how long it has been since I first entered in my name, age, favorite movies and other details and explored the new frontier called “Social Networking”.

Since then, I have on average kept my profile up-to-date, found old friends, found new friends, and generally engaged in the wide and curious world that is Myspace.

It’s worth noting how in such a short period of time the general opinion about online social networking has changed. Here’s an extract from the second blog I posted on Myspace, one that I wrote a few months after opening my account:

“So, (call me a hypocrite Mel!) I don't hate Myspace as much as I though I would….dang, it's so much fun denying friendship to people...sigh, life is fun.
I actually think Myspace is gonna be a big thing (bigger then it is already). My socio-predictions for the future predict that teh internetz is gonna be integeral, and social networks (Myspace) are gonna be huge. So I thought I'd jump on the bandwangon now! So I can say to my kids 'Oh yeah, I was one of the first on Myspace, a freakin' pioneer I was'.” (Taylor, 2006)

I hesitantly opened a profile back in 2006, unsure exactly of what I was getting myself into. But as press coverage increased, so did my curiosity. Peer group pressure also played its part. Social Networking has become so much of the norm in recent years that, at least for under 30s, you’re in the minority if you don’t have at least one online profile. You have to come to the conclusion that “One thing is certain - social networking has become - the thing - to do online.” (AAP, 2007)

This sheds light on how a lot of social networking sites get their users. Simply put: Hype. Currently, Myspace stands head and shoulders above the rest in simple weight-of-users, with over 200 million profiles (Cashmore, 2007) But it’s main rival Facebook, recently moving from exclusively American University users to the general public, is quickly catching up. The more adult-oriented site is growing at a rate of almost 300% per year (AAP, 2007). The new kid on the block is getting a lot of attention, and this in converted into more people signing up. Perhaps one of the reasons we social network is to be “part of the buzz’? It seems to have worked so far.

Although we’ve seen this social networking boom in the last 3 to 5 years, the basic idea of online networks have been around since the internet’s birth. From the first forum style network, Usenet, which was conceived by Duke University graduates Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis all the way back in 1979 (Various, 1999), many others have come and gone. Sites such as Match.com, Friendster, Delicious, Flickr, Twitter and Window’s Live Space are all part of the abundance of social networking sites spread across the internet.

Although Myspace has dominated the market for the past few years, with the rapidly expanding Facebook and others, the climate is definitely changing.

Update October 16

Myspace has recently reacted to the new flavor-of-the-month Facebook, and has taken a leaf out of their book (excuse the pun). With the “New Home Skin” option, users can view their data in a cleaner and more streamline way, very similar to Facebook’s user interface. (DeMonte, 2007)

References

• AAP. (2007). Social networking the thing to do. Available: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1411977. Last accessed 24 October 2007.

• Cashmore, P. (2007). 200 Million MySpace Accounts. Available: http://mashable.com/2007/09/09/200-million-myspace-accounts/. Last accessed 24 October 2007.

• Taylor, C. (2006). Myspace & Work & Music. Available: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=80174028&blogID=146979860. Last accessed 24 October 2007.

• Various (1999). Usenet Software: History and Sources. Available: http://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/usenet/software/part1.html. Last accessed 2 November 2007.

Introduction

Hi, welcome to my blog.

This blog has been set up exclusively for my HALM206 Social Networking Assignment. Over the course of around six weeks, I'll be engaging, exploring and critically analyzing the popular social networking site, Myspace. Summaries of my activities will be posted in this blog.

I opened my myspace account in late 2006. Since then, I have regularly checked, used and engaged with Myspace and my network of friends. I find it both a useful and enjoyable pass time, but it is not without it's flaws, both of ़ which I will endeavor to explore during the course of this project.

A good, albeit old, introduction to Myspace can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/jtv/video/default.htm?clip=myspace

My myspace URL is http://www.myspace.com/callumdotcom

Enjoy!
Callum