Nearly 5 years ago I packed my bags and moved away from home to start school in the Peace Garden state. In the process, I managed to sever nearly all ties with anyone I knew back home, including close friends, former classmates, and ex-girlfriends. It was unclear to me if I would ever hear from them again.
Being the sort of person to shy away from social surroundings, I found it difficult to make new friends in class, or even while living in the dorms. So it seemed natural that I would seek out companionship over the internet. I joined social networking communities such as Xanga, Friendster, and even registered my profile on Hotornot. However, Xanga only made me more introverted, Friendster was excruciatingly slow, and Hotornot was a humbling experience, where I generally received around the 7.0 level of hotness (on a scale of 1-10). So when I was introduced to MySpace.com, it didn't require much incentive to lure me in.
According to their mission statement, "MySpace is a social networking service that allows members to create unique personal profiles online in order to find and communicate with old and new friends." And this free service has quickly become a phenomenal success, with over 30 million registered members in only 2 short years of existence. People young and old, of every social and economical background across the country have taken advantage of the most well-developed social destination on the net.
For those unfamiliar with MySpace, an individual (or band) can create their own profile that allows them to showcase pictures, a description of who they are and what their interests are. Once a profile is made, one has the opportunity to make friends that share common interests, or meet up with people you already know. MySpace provides a plethora of different features including: weblogging (a public diary, of sorts), chat rooms, message boards, instant messaging, picture ranking, and an emailing system that allows you to keep in touch with friends. The search engine allows you to browse people by their location, and you can also hunt down people according to where they attended high school or college. MySpace also allows for members to form or join groups that are based on mutual interests. So if you wish to start an online support group or find someone else who appreciates scrap-booking as much as you, there is something for everyone.
MySpace has become a hit in the Fargo-Moorhead area as well. A recent search yielded a result of over 2,250 individual users in the metro area alone. Many of these individuals use MySpace as a way to showcase their personal artistic endeavors as well, especially musicians. I have found over 120 local bands and solo artists while searching the music section of MySpace. Whenever I want to learn of a local concert, I can browse local concert promoters who also use MySpace, and be in the know.
MySpace has become popular because it's a safe and easy way to meet people without having to go through mutual friends, or putting effort into the process of introductions and small-talk. If you are interested in someone, all you have to do is ask them to add you. This gives the user total control of who they want to be associated with. The site also gives people a forum to express their selves and to be creative in how they present who they are towards other people. It almost becomes a hobby, signing in to see who has left you comments or emails, or what's going on in the personal lives of your friends.
Once I joined MySpace, I slowly began to meet and make acquaintances with people I hadn't met in person. Eventually it would help me form many friendships with people in real life that I might not have met otherwise. And there is no roof to the amount of success stories I?ve heard second-hand from friends or couples that met through MySpace.
There is a sociological undercurrent at work here, and its all about how we communicate with each other. It used to either be nerdy or too dangerous to meet people over the internet, but websites like MySpace are bringing social networking sites to the mainstream, giving people more options in the way people communicate with each other. Though MySpace allows people to initiate and manage their friendships, it still takes time and effort to produce a meaningful, uplifting relationship with someone.
This summer, as MySpace started to boom with new users, I noticed an alarming trend in my own social networking circle. People from my past started appearing out of nowhere in droves. Well over 20 of them so far. Some important and influential to me, while some that I had just forgotten about over time. And I've even had the pleasure to communicate and play catch up with many of these people.
Being one of the most frequented websites on the internet eventually caught the attention of News Corporation, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. In July of 2005, the massive parent company of Fox Media and Direct TV, with well-known ties to the GOP, purchased MySpace.com and its parent company IntermixMedia for $580 million, straight-up cash. Lauded as a bargain by industry insiders, News Corporation currently owns 53% of MySpace, with the option to purchase the remainder at a later period. Rumors spread on message boards across the net that MySpace would see major changes, including the sensitive issue of censorship. However, outside of an increase in advertising, the affects of the buyout have yet to be felt. In fact, the very same people that created MySpace continue to control the site as they always have.
MySpace was created in July of 2003 under the leadership of Tom Anderson. His initial objective of creating a community for artists to showcase their talents, spread like wildfire in the LA music and club scene. And since MySpace was, in a sense, developed to help people promote themselves, it's no wonder that over 350,000 bands across the world have developed their own MySpace account. Bands can post their tour dates, photos, information about their band, downloadable songs, and even music videos. Many bands have made their MySpace profile their homepage, completely forgoing their own personalized site. And the most interesting aspect of browsing a band's MySpace page is that you can see who and what kind of people are fans of the band. Many musicians are even allowing their music to be sampled before the album is released.
MySpace is making it easier for bands to survive in the industry without having a record label. It's easy to see how MySpace is slowly changing the music industry, perhaps for the better.
But not everything about MySpace is sugarcoated. One particular faction of MySpace that confounds me is the brazen amount of amateur porn, people posing provocatively in their undies, or even the recent rise in porn star profiles and adult entertainment recruiters, despite infractions of the site's user policy agreement. Many of these fertile, young women are willing to bare it all (or most of it) for absolutely no financial kickback, which says a lot about the 21st century woman and how tantalizing photos can be a lucrative way to attract men seeking illicit, no strings attached sexual encounters. For the most part, there appears to be positive social rewards for ditching modesty. And in the process, women now have the opportunity to be behind the wheel of their own pornographic ventures. Some might see this as progress, but porn just may be the lowest common denominator of the website, and potentially its downfall.
Despite some of the negative aspects of MySpace, the site is a thriving community with the resources and popularity that could very well change the way people use the internet. And as perceptions of meeting people over the Internet change, MySpace is very well capable of altering the way people socialize. And as more people utilize the Internet for entertainment and communication, the more websites like MySpace can influence the very culture it relies on.