The original myspace node is now two years old, and it's time to update.
Friendster is dead.
As of February 2006 myspace is the 5th most popular english website (according to traffic ranking site www.alexa.com). It has grown to over 56 million users (this is not an entirely accurate estimate as many of the profiles are fakes) and the majority of those users are teenagers and people in their early 20's. Intermix Media, the company that owned myspace, was bought out for $580 million in 2005 by by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises).
What's Been Added and Changed
- Minimum user age is 14.
- Instant messaging with other users.
- MySpace Music, band pages and music videos.
- Music codes that can be put into profiles enable users to have their favorite song play for you when you look at their profile.
- MySpace Film
- MySpace Games
- Forums
Controversy and Problems
As with heavy metal in the 80's and chat rooms in the 90's, parents are throwing a fit over myspace. Many are worried about sexual predators. Few parents understand that for many teenagers "friend collecting", or putting as many people on your friends list as possible, even people you don't know and don't talk to, on sites like myspace is popular and they shouldn't worry that their 15 year old daughter has a gagillion 20-something or older male friends. In addition to this, like any fairly unregulated forum, myspace has had problems with fake profiles featuring slanderous content, and racist and otherwise hateful usergroups.
In summary
Myspace is the new bastion for 15-year olds with cluttered and raucous profiles featuring web-quizzes telling them what their earth element is and a dozen photoshoped pictures of themselves taken at armslength looking broody. While some people claim to use it for actual networking purposes, I don't know why you would unless you actually wanted to talk to 15-year-olds, and who wants that?
Sources:
http://www.myspace.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace
http://www.alexa.com
"Scenes from the MySpace Backlash" http://wired.com/news/politics/0,70254-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
"A MySpace Cheat Sheet for Parents" http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70287-0.html?tw=rss.index
"The MySpace Generation" http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963001.htm