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/