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Myspace

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MySpace.com (or MySpace) is a free service that uses the Internet for online communication through an interactive network of photos, weblogs, user profiles, an internal e-mail system, web forums, and groups, as well as other media formats. This all-inclusive service is sometimes called a social networking interface. MySpace is a very active site, and additions and new features are being added constantly. The site has become so increasingly popular recently that many mainstream music groups have pages on the site, but it has not been that popular as a web space for celebrities, possibly due to the fact that the site is filled with fake celebrity profiles created by many of the fans. The term MySpace is also sometimes used to describe a user created webpage on the MySpace.com service.

On July 18, 2005, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the parent company of Fox, DirectTV, and other media enterprises, announced that it would purchase IntermixMedia, the parent company of MySpace.com, for $580 million.


Beginnings

Founded around July 2003. The persons most responsible for the development and advertisement of the site is Tom Anderson.

Within months, the site's popularity exploded and the programmers were hurried to improve the site as much as possible. In early September, many changes were made just so that users could delete things.

On September 25, 2003, MySpace announced the addition of several major features to the site. Included were the first group profiles, the ability to empty the trash in the mailbox, a new look for the bulletin board, a mail indicator live anywhere on the system, unlimited friends, and the option to change an email and turn off reminders. Also, a number of bugs were fixed.

October 2003 brought new features such as leaving comments on people's profile pictures, hiding online status, having the ability to block friend requests, and approve comments before they could be posted. In November of 2003, MySpace added features such as Classifieds, picture ranking, and a way to find users by interest. The "Online Now" status was also added in more areas, and the Mailbox was vastly improved. At this time, users were starting to experiment with HTML, creating more elaborate profiles that attracted interest. Some users offered their help so that new and inexperienced users could also learn to customize their profile.

On December 18, 2003, MySpace introduced their Instant Messenger, for one-on-one IM communication between users. Some MySpacers have created their own IRC chatrooms and marketed them as unofficial. MySpace added its own Chat Rooms in February of 2004. To this date, MySpace generates a large amount of revenue through promotional partnerships and sponsorships.

2004

In 2004, musical artists were allowed to create their own profiles and were given the option to post streaming MP3s of their songs to build up bigger fanbases. Some bands even allowed the MP3s to be downloaded.

In early April 2004, new features such as forums, games, Advanced Browse, and a new Journal customization were introduced to the public. The games included the very popular Gold Miner.

File:Myspace screenshot.png
Front page of MySpace.com. Sign up/log in links. Also shown are random new users, a featured group or profile, a featured musical artist, and the latest member blogs.

On June 4, 2004, members were given the ability to create brand-new groups so that like-minded people could share a common bond. There are two ways for groups to add members. The moderator of any group can invite members individually, or members can join themselves by either word of mouth or by browsing the 'Groups' section of MySpace. However, some groups have gone under scrutiny by the creators of the site, with some posting offensive photos, which was a direct violation of the site's rules. Attempts are being made every day to deal with these types of groups, and in the end the hope is that it remains free of offensive material. Other threats that have emerged within groups and the site in general are spammers and trolls, with trolls tending to vandalize the forums with HTML. Some sites, such as Johniscool.com, offer tutorials on how to vandalize MySpace.com profiles

Fall of 2004 brought another small feature to the blogs. Users could now give "props", later changed to "kudos", to their friends if they were in support of them, to praise them, or just to give respect. Another name change came to the journals; they were now called blogs.

Towards the end of 2004, and into 2005, MySpace gave the option to "event invite". Many bands are now using this feature to invite fans to shows, and it can be used for many other purposes. Also at this time, rumors of a possible shutdown of the site began circulating. To resolve this, Tom posted on everyone's Mailbox, saying "MySpace is not shutting down, and it will never shut down".

2005

On January 27, 2005, MySpace introduced another new feature that lets members see if their friends on AOL, Yahoo!, or MSN are members on MySpace. After early teething problems this is now a useful addition to the site.

MySpace implemented another new feature with member's schools, that previously people had to show that they were alumni or students of. On February 8, 2005, all those who had entered their schools into the system were automatically assembled into a homepage for each school or college of which they were an alumnus or student. Members could now search for classmates with much ease, and in the process the homepages replaced some thriving groups dedicated to schools. The new homepages displayed fifteen members at random; all were students of the school, plus recently added members were pushed to the left hand side of the page. The homepage also gave classified spaces for people to sell textbooks, and advertise open apartments and spaces for roommates. Also those looking for these items or positions could request in their own section. The homepage came with its own forums, thus rendering the original groups useless, however there was no ability to add pictures, and unlike the groups, there was no moderator.

On February 24, 2005, MySpace implemented a handy new way for moderators to keep certain threads constantly at the top of group forums. On other sites with forums, these are known as "sticky threads", that are perpetually accessible to all users, rather than having to search through pages of other threads. For a moderator to make a thread "stick" to the top, they must activate what MySpace calls Pins; pinning a thread sends it to the top until it is unpinned. This feature is useful for those who want attention drawn to a certain topic rather than have it pushed down by others, or having to "bump" it back up.

On March 28, customizable name-URLs were introduced. With this new system, users were permitted to specify a string of text that would become part of a link to their profile page. After implementing this feature, users could acess other profiles by entering "www.myspace.com/NAME," rather than "www.myspace.com/IDNUMBER." ID numbers were usually 7-10 numerals in length, and were inconvenient and difficult to remember.

On June 11, Myspace introduced a calendar system, similar to the calendars that free webmail providers offer.

On July 18, News Corporation announced that it would be buying Intermix Media for $580 million. Intermix Media owned 53% of MySpace at the time of purchase and planned to buy the rest.

HTML tutorials

Many users have found that the profile generators are an easy way to edit the look of their profiles. However, some users have the urge to be able to work on their own coding, HTML Tutorials was created just for that purpose. While it was created as a standard myspace profile it has many Tutorials with customized HTML coding. Each of the tutorials allows the user to change their profile by either memorizing or by cutting and pasting the proper codes into their own profile via edit mode. For more HTML codes visit www.MySpaceHTML.net.

Embedded music videos

Embedding music videos into profiles is also very popular on MySpace and this makes sense since music is probably one of the major reasons why MySpace has been very successful. Some websites offer a directory of videos, including the HTML code to simplify the process of adding videos to one's profile.

Websites are also now beginning to offer codes for funny videos and not just music videos, revolutionizing comedy websites.

Problems

MySpace has always had much trouble keeping up with new members, as thousands join daily, and the servers have undergone frequent maintenance to speed up the system. Ironically, all the maintenance had a tendency to slow down the site even more. Additionally, the creators of the site added a new feature nearly every month and suffers from severe "bloat."

Also, MySpace is set up so virtually anyone can customize the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions. As most MySpacers are not professional web developers, and are unaware of what they are doing, this often causes confusion and disorientation. Many profiles have clashing backgrounds and colors and unreadable text. In addition, some MySpace profiles have been known to freeze browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, due to malformed CSS coding, a result of users placing many videos and flash programs on their profiles. It is also possible that videos on profiles that use Windows Media Player can corrupt the program if it is playing simultaneously with someone's on their computer. Some of the most startling problems include accidentally accessing another member's personal profile and the occasional deletion of whole profiles.

In addition to users misusing HTML and CSS in their profiles, MySpace itself produces antiquated, inefficient, and standards-incompliant HTML.

Intermix Media Inc, the parent company of MySpace, was sued by New York State in April 2005 for various spyware related offenses. Intermix settled for $7.9 million, with no admission of guilt. They had already stopped distributing any such programs. [1]

A XSS vulnerability was recently revealed on Kuro5hin in an article called MySpace: A Place for Dolts.

Myspace may cause problems for those susceptible to internet addiction.

Celebrations

Tom and the other creators have also hosted many parties in Hollywood, Miami, New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, and Hawaii to support the site.


Stats

Some stats from the site (as of January 20, 2005):

  • There are 20 forums.
  • There are around 300,000 topics in the main site forums.
  • A total of 3 million forum posts.
  • There are around 200,000 groups.
  • There are around 60 million group forum posts.
  • There are 300,000 bands/musicians on MySpace.
  • There are over 20 million profiles inside MySpace. (as of June 30, 2005)

Groups are an important part of the site, and many have quite large memberships.

These are the 10 largest groups on Myspace in membership (as of August 10, 2005).

  1. urbnmix.net music video source (222,304 members)
  2. Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County Fan Club (90,968 members)
  3. The O.C. (85,839 members)
  4. Make Out Club (66,402 members)
  5. Adult Swim (62,238 members)
  6. Green Day (60,452 members)
  7. Abercrombie and Fitch (54,022 members)
  8. looking for new friends (52,118 members)
  9. HTML code source (50,488 members)
  10. Taking Back Sunday (47,151 members)

See also

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