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'''MySpace''' is a [[social network service|social networking]] [[website]] offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in [[Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills]], [[California]], [[USA]],<ref>[http://www.laobserved.com/biz/2006/08/my_space_is_not_thei.php My Space is not their space anymore] - Article on the move to [[Beverly Hills]]. Retrieved March 16, 2007.</ref> where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, [[Fox Interactive Media]]; which is owned by [[News Corporation]], which has its headquarters in [[New York City]]. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the [[United States]].<ref>[http://mashable.com/2006/07/11/myspace-americas-number-one/ MySpace, America’s Number One<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> According to [[comScore]], MySpace has been overtaken by main competitor [[Facebook]] in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Facebook_Largest_Fastest_Growing_Social_Network/551-92134-643.html |title=Facebook: Largest, Fastest Growing Social Network |accessdate=2008-08-14 |author=Techtree News Staff |date=2008-08-13 |work=Techtree.com |publisher=ITNation |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= }}</ref>
'''MySpace''' is a [[social network service|social networking]] [[website]] offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in [[Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills]], [[California]], [[USA]],<ref>[http://www.laobserved.com/biz/2006/08/my_space_is_not_thei.php My Space is not their space anymore] - Article on the move to [[Beverly Hills]]. Retrieved March 16, 2007.</ref> where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, [[Fox Interactive Media]]; which is owned by [[News Corporation]], which has its headquarters in [[New York City]].
In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the [[United States]].<ref>[http://mashable.com/2006/07/11/myspace-americas-number-one/ MySpace, America’s Number One<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> According to [[comScore]], MySpace has been overtaken by main competitor [[Facebook]] in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Facebook_Largest_Fastest_Growing_Social_Network/551-92134-643.html |title=Facebook: Largest, Fastest Growing Social Network |accessdate=2008-08-14 |author=Techtree News Staff |date=2008-08-13 |work=Techtree.com |publisher=ITNation |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= }}</ref>
The company employs 300 staff<ref name="CNNMoney-MyspaceCowboys">{{cite news
The company employs 300 staff<ref name="CNNMoney-MyspaceCowboys">{{cite news
| url=http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/04/8384727/index.htm
| url=http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/04/8384727/index.htm

Revision as of 13:04, 1 November 2008

MySpace
Type of businessSubsidiary
Type of site
Social network service
Available in15 languages
Founded2003
Headquarters
Beverly Hills, California
OwnerFox Interactive Media
Key peopleTom Anderson, President
Chris DeWolfe, CEO
Employees300
URLMySpace.com
AdvertisingGoogle, AdSense
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedAugust 2003
Current statusActive

MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA,[1] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City. 

In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States.[2] According to comScore, MySpace has been overtaken by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.[3]

The company employs 300 staff[4] and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006[5] in the Netherlands[6] and the site counted approximately 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[7]. MySpace.com attracts 230,000 new users per day.[8]

History

Fox Interactive Media headquarters, 407 North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills, California, where MySpace is also housed

After the 2002 launch of Friendster, several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw its potential and decided to mimic the more popular features of the social networking website, in August 2003. Within 10 days, the first version of MySpace was ready for launch. [9] A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity was available for the site, right out of the gate, so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.

The very first MySpace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign-up the most users.[10] The company then used its resources to push MySpace to the masses. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to quickly breathe life into MySpace,[11] and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites. A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the MySpace platform when Brad Greenspan asked him to join the team.[12]

The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc.[13] It was intended to be a leading online data storage and sharing site up until 2002. By 2004, MySpace and MySpace.com, which existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com,[14][15] had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. This is the natural connection to Chris DeWolfe and a friend, who reminded him he had earlier bought the URL domain, MySpace.com, intending it to be used as a web hosting site,[16] since both worked at one time in the virtual data storage business, which itself was a casualty of the "dot bomb" era.

Shortly after launching the site, team member Chris DeWolfe suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service.[17] Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping MySpace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.[18]

Some employees of MySpace including DeWolfe and Berman were later able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises).[19][9] Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.[20]

In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene"[21] which they have since done. They also released a version in China and will possibly launch similar versions in other countries.[22]

The corporate history of MySpace as well as the status of Tom Anderson as a MySpace founder has been a matter of some public dispute.

Revenue model

MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user.[23] Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, MySpace is second only to Yahoo! in its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees.[24]

On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace.[25][26][27] MySpace has proven to be a windfall for many smaller companies that provide widgets or accessories to the social networking giant. Companies such as Slide.com, RockYou!, and YouTube were all launched on MySpace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties.[28][29]

Contents of a MySpace profile

Moods

Moods are small emoticons that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007.

Blurbs, blogs, multimedia

Profiles contain two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. In the "Details" section, "Status" and "Zodiac Sign" fields will always display. However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image", the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Blogging features have been the main part of MySpace.

Comments

Below the User's Friends Space (by default) is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted, and replaced with the comment saying "This Profile No Longer Exists."

Profile customization (HTML)

MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me," "I'd Like to Meet," and "Interests." Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace.

A user can also change the general appearance of his or her page by entering CSS (in a <style> ... </style> element) into one of these fields to override the page's default style sheet using MySpace editors. This is often used to tweak fonts and colors. The fact that the user-added CSS is located in the middle of the page (rather than being located in the <head> element) means that the page will begin to load with the default MySpace layout before abruptly changing to the custom layout. A special type of modification is a div overlay, where the default layout is dramatically changed by hiding default text with <div> tags and large images.

There are several independent web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them.

MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS loading delay issue, as the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile. The MySpace profile editor also has a criticism with how the links appear on the profile.

Music

Wikinews has related news:

MySpace profiles for musicians are different from normal profiles in that artists are allowed to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users. Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch the owner of Fox news and 20th Century Fox in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music.[16] MySpace Music is a section of the website that allows its users to display their songs. It doesn’t matter if the artist is already famous or still looking for a break into the industry; aspiring artists can load their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lilly Allen and Sean Kingston gained fame through MySpace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop in the foundation of young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by MySpace, and many more continue to be discovered daily.[30]Myspace has recently redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. New features of this new redesigned music feature includes the ability for users to create playlists, to resemble the functions of lastfm and other social music websires, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archives songs from many popular[artists, making it resemble the iTunes and Napster service.

MySpace features

Bulletins

Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that.[31] They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.

Groups

MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.

MySpaceIM

Main article: MySpaceIM

In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.

MySpaceTV

In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. MySpaceTV might be a standard channel that will be shown on television.

Applications

In 2008, MySpace introduced an API with which users could create applications for other users to post on their profiles. The applications are similar to the Facebook applications. In May 2008, MySpace had added some security options regarding interaction with photos and other media.

MySpace Mobile

There are a variety of environments in which users can access MySpace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that can utilize a service known as MySpace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of, other members.[32] Additionally, UIEvolution and MySpace developed a mobile version of MySpace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T,[33] Vodafone[34] and Rogers Wireless.[35]

MySpace News

In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.

MySpace Classifieds

Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. Has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception. MySpace Classifieds was launched right at the same time the site appeared on the internet.[36]

MySpace Karaoke

Launched April 29, 2008, ksolo.myspace.com is a combination of MySpace and kSolo, which allows users to upload audio recordings of themselves singing onto their profile page. Users' friends are able to rate the performances. A video feature is not yet available, but Tom Anderson, MySpace co-founder and president, states that it is in the works.[37]

MySpace polls

MySpace Polls is a feature on MySpace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.

MySpace forums

MySpace uses an implementation of community server for its forum system.[38]

Politics

  • Many hopeful 2008 presidential candidates have set up MySpace profiles, presumably in an effort to snare younger voters. Most profiles feature photos, blogs, videos, and ways for viewers to get involved with campaigning. MySpace features these politicians' profiles on its front page in the "Cool New People" section, on what appears to be a random rotation.
  • Many political organizations have created MySpace accounts to keep in touch with and expand their membership base. These range from larger organizations like Greenpeace and the ACLU to smaller locally focused environmentalist groups and Food Not Bombs activists.

Controversy over corporate history

Spam/Tom Anderson PR

In September 2006, a lengthy article written by web journalist Trent Lapinski, "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0," was published by the Silicon Valley gossip blog, Valleywag (a Gawker Media property). The article recounted a detailed corporate history of MySpace, alleging that MySpace was not organically grown from Tom Anderson's garage, but rather was a product developed by eUniverse aimed at overtaking Friendster, and that had initially gained popularity through an intensive mass internet campaign and not by word of mouth.[39] Amongst other claims was the assertion that Tom Anderson had originally been hired as a copyeditor and his "founder" and "first friend" status was a public relations invention. Lapinski suggested that News Corp. had attempted to suppress the publication of the history by threatening his original publisher. In addition, Tom's age on the site was lowered to "appeal" to younger users. [40]

Brad Greenspan/The MySpace Report

In October 2006, Brad Greenspan (the former Chairman, CEO and largest individual shareholder of Intermix Media, who claims to be the true "founder of MySpace") launched a website and published "The MySpace Report" that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to investigate News Corp's acquisition of MySpace as "one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history."[41] The report's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process.[42] The report received a mixed response from financial commentators in the press.[43] An initial lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.[44]

Greenspan's report also states that the MySpace program code had originally been the brainchild of an Intermix/eUniverse programmer named Toan Nguyen who made the breakthrough technical contributions to the project.[45]

Valleywag speculated that Greenspan was likely a key source for Lapinski's September article, "MySpace founder accuses company of defrauding investors of $20 billion."

Criticism

Accessibility and reliability

Because most MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, a very large proportion of pages do not satisfy the criteria for valid HTML or CSS laid down by the W3C. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers.[46] The MySpace home page, as of August 18, 2008, fails HTML validation with around 125 errors (the number changes on sequential validations of the home page due to dynamic content), using the W3C's validator.[47]

Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customize the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions, provided that the advertisements are not covered up by CSS or using other means. As MySpace users are usually not skilled web developers, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and sound files are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). While MySpace blocks potentially harmful code (such as JavaScript) from profiles, users have occasionally found ways to insert such code. PC World cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.[48]

In addition, new features have been gradually added (see featuritis). This, and the increasing number of MySpace members, leads to an increase in bandwidth used. This increase in usage often slows down the servers and may result in a "Server Too Busy" error message for some users who are on at peak hours, "Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group," or a variety of any other error messages throughout the day.[49]

Security

In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by "Samy" to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has reported that "social-networking sites like MySpace are turning out to be hotbeds for spyware," with "infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com."[50] In addition to this, the customization of user pages currently allows the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user profile, thus keeping the myspace.com domain as the address.[51] More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing.[52] Users find their MySpace homepage with bulletins they didn't post, realizing later they had been phished. The bulletin consists of an advertisement that provides a link to a fake login screen, tricking people into typing in their MySpace e-mail and password.

Other security fears regarding profile content itself are also present. For example, the embedding of videos inherently allows all of the format's abilities and functions to be used on a page. A prime example of this surfaced in December 2006, when embedded QuickTime videos were shown to contain hyperlinks to JavaScript files, which would be run simply by a user visiting a 'phished' profile page, or even in some cases by simply viewing a user's 'about me' elsewhere on the site. Users who entered their login information into a fake login bar that appeared would also become 'phished', and their account would be used to spam other members, thus spreading this security problem.[53]

MySpace's anti-phishing and anti-spam measures have also come under fire. In 2007, MySpace made changes such that external links on profiles would be redirected through the http://msplinks.com domain. For example, http://wiki.riteme.site would be changed to http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZw==. (The new links are determined by Base64 encoding, as there are ways of decoding the link back into its original URL. [2]) MySpace staffers would be able to disable potentially dangerous links. (The changed links only work if the HTTP referrer is a MySpace page; otherwise, the link will appear to be disabled.) This move has been criticized that it makes profile editing inconvenient and that it does nothing to deter spammers. In February 2008, MySpace changed the system such that users who click such links (except for whitelisted domains like Wikipedia and YouTube) will receive a warning that they will be leaving the myspace.com domain. As of March 2008, this "feature" has been extended to blogs as well, although previous blog entries are unaffected unless the user updates them.

In January 2008, the states attorneys general of 49 states of the USA wrote guidelines for online safety for MySpace and other services. They included restrictions for behavior on social networking services.[54]

On January 26, 2008 over 567,000 private MySpace user pictures were uploaded from the site by using a bug published on YouTube and put on the Piratebay torrent site for download.[55]

MySpace party gatecrashers

Gatecrashed MySpace parties have cost lives, and caused thousands of dollars damage to property. The Sydney Morning Herald's online technology writer, Asher Moses, says that MySpace/Facebook parties are particularly prone to gatecrashing because news of events can spread to uninvited guests via "newsfeeds." He suspects some party hosts are oblivious to the actual number of people who get the message."[56] There have been a number of Gatecrashed MySpace parties that have received front page news.[56]

  • A party hosted by Corey Delaney, a 16-year-old boy from Narre Warren in Melbourne, and advertised on MySpace, resulted in 500 people attending. Police cars were attacked, and they called in support, including the dog squad and a helicopter. The incident received international coverage.[57][56] Delaney received both negative and positive publicity, and was given work as a party promoter for under age events.[58]. Corey's Press Coverage was also used to help Ten Network's Big Brother to get better ratings by adding him into the house as a special guest.
  • In April 2007, a 17-year-old British girl hosted a party after distributing a on MySpace that was reportedly subtitled "Let's trash the average family-sized house disco party." Her parents were left with an approximate £24,000 ($48,000) bill from police.[56][59]
  • Allen Joplin, a 17-year-old American high school student, was shot dead by an uninvited guest at an underage party after it had been publicized through MySpace.[56][60]

Child safety

The minimum age to register an account on MySpace is 14. [61] Profiles with ages set from 14 to 15 years are automatically private. Users whose ages are set at 16 or over have the option to set their profile to public viewing. Accessing the full profile of, or messaging someone when their account is set to "private" (or if under sixteen) is restricted to a MySpace user's direct friends.

MySpace will delete fake profiles if the victim verifies their identity and points out the profile via e-mail.[62]

Recently, MySpace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace, and have been the target of online predators. Stricter methods for enforcing age admission will be enforced in the future, such as blocking a person from accessing MySpace using a computers IP address.[63] In response, MySpace has given assurances to parents that the website is safe for people of all ages. Beginning in late June 2006, MySpace users whose ages are set over 18 could no longer be able to add users whose ages are set from 14 to 15 years as friends unless they already know the user's full name or email address.[64] Some third party Internet safety companies like Social Shield[65] have launched online communities for parents concerned about their child's safety on MySpace.

In June 2006, 16-year-old American Katherine Lester flew to the Middle East, to Tel Aviv, Israel, after having tricked her parents into getting her a passport in order to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace.[66] U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.

In October 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying instigated by the mother of a friend who had posed as a 16-year old named "Josh Evans".[67]

In December 2006, MySpace announced new measures to protect children from known sex offenders. Although precise details were not given they said that "tools" would be implemented to prevent known sex offenders from the USA creating a MySpace profile.[68]

In February 2007, a U.S. District Judge in Texas dismissed a case when a family sued MySpace for negligence, fraud, and misrepresentation; a girl in the family had been sexually assaulted by a man she met through MySpace, after she had misrepresented her age as 18 when she was 13. Regarding his dismissal of the case, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote: "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace."[69]

In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders.[70] Anti-pedophile organization Perverted Justice has praised MySpace for its efforts to combat pedophiles using their service.[71]

In October 2007, a study published in the Journal of Adolescence conducted by Sameer Hinduja (Florida Atlantic University) and Justin W. Patchin (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) concluded that most adolescents use MySpace responsibly: "When considered in its proper context, these results indicate that the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the website," they say.[72]

Social and cultural

Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy magazine, related his experiences of experimentation with membership in MySpace. Among his other criticisms, one pertains to the distance afforded by the Internet that emboldens members, such as females who feature photos of themselves in scant clothing on their profile pages or behave in ways they would not in person, and he indicated that this duplicity undercuts the central design of MySpace, namely, to bring people together. Itzkoff also referenced the addictive, time-consuming nature of the site, mentioning that the Playboy Playmate and MySpace member Julie McCullough, who was the first to respond to his add-friend request, pointedly referred to the site as "cybercrack". Itzkoff argued that MySpace gives many people access to a member’s life, without giving the time needed to maintain such relationships and that such relationships do not possess the depth of in-person relationships.

Furthermore, in terms of MySpace's potential for underhanded commercial exploitation, Itzkoff is particularly critical of the disturbing and fraudulent behavior of people who can contact a member, unsolicited, as when he was contacted by someone expressing a desire to socialize and date, but whose blog (to which Itzkoff was directed via subsequent emails) was found to be a solicitation for a series of commercial porn sites. Itzkoff is similarly critical of the more subtle commercial solicitations on the site, such as the banner ads and links to profiles and video clips that turn out to be, for example, commercials for new 20th Century Fox films. He also observed that MySpace’s much-celebrated music section is heavily weighted in favor of record labels rather than breakthrough musicians.

In relating criticism from another person, whom Itzkoff called "Judas," he illustrated that, while the goal of attempting to bring together people who might not otherwise associate with one another in real life may seem honorable, MySpace inherently violates a social contract only present when people interact face-to-face, rendering, in his opinion, the website nothing more than a passing fad:

There will come a moment when, like deer quivering and flicking up their ears toward a noiseless noise in the woods, the first adopters will suddenly realize they’re spending their time blogging, adding, and gawking at the same alarming photos as an army of 14-year olds, and quick as deer, they’ll dash to the next trend. And before you know it, we’ll all follow.[73]

Censorship

Activist group MoveOn.org has criticized MySpace, claiming that the website practices censorship by not showing anti-media ads, removing fake profiles for high-profile media executives like Rupert Murdoch, and allegedly attempting to force users away from using third-party flash applications on their profiles.[74] MySpace also generated controversy for censoring YouTube videos.

Stalking

According to Alison Kiss, program director for Security on Campus, social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook have made it easier for stalkers who target women on college campuses.[75]

MySpace China

The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April 2007, has many censorship-related differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such as religion and politics are absent, and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content about Taiwan independence, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added.[76] Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, and spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."[77]

See also: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

Religious discrimination

On January 30, 2008, Bryan J. Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor, and moderator of the Atheist and Agnostic Group, accused MySpace of pandering to religious intolerance by deleting atheist users, groups and content. Specifically, Pesta alleges that MySpace deleted AAG's account, and his own personal profile, based on complaints from people offended by atheism, and this was the second time MySpace deleted the group since November 2007, even though, according to Pesta, it had never violated the site's Terms of Service. The page was again hacked on Thanksgiving 2007, and restored three weeks later, before being ultimately removed again.[78]

International sites

Since early 2006, MySpace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g. UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People," and UK oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g. United States: "favorites," mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of the world: "favourites," dd/mm/yyyy).

Sites currently offered are:

MySpace Developer Platform (MDP)

On February 5, 2008, MySpace set up a developer platform which allows developers to share their ideas and write their own MySpace applications. The opening was inaugurated with a workshop at the MySpace, San Francisco offices two weeks before the official launch. The MDP is based on the Open Social API which was presented by Google in November 2007 to support social networks to develop social and interacting widgets and can be seen as an answer to Facebooks developer platform. The first public beta of the MySpace Apps was released on March 5, 2008, with around 1,000 applications available.[79] [80]

Musicians' rights and MySpace Terms of Use Agreement

Until June 2006, there was a concern amongst musicians, artists, and bands on MySpace such as songwriter Billy Bragg owing to the fine print within the user agreement that read, "You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services." The fine print brought particular concern as the agreement was being made with Murdoch's News Corporation. Billy Bragg brought the issue to the attention of the media during the first week of June 2006.[81] Jeff Berman, a MySpace spokesman swiftly responded by saying, "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends."

By June 27, 2006, MySpace had amended the user agreement with, "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose."

Blocking

Multiple schools and public libraries in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Malaysia have restricted access to MySpace, seeing it as "a haven for student gossip and malicious comments."[82]

A Catholic school in New Jersey has even prohibited students from using MySpace at home, an action made to protect students from online predators as claimed by the school, although experts questioned the legality of such a ban. In Autumn of 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta Township, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on MySpace or similar websites (such as Gaia) under threat of suspension or expulsion.[83][84][85]

Although schools, businesses, and some public libraries try to prevent the use of MySpace, they are not always successful; students have been known to use web proxies and downloadable software, along with "fake browsers" in order to log in to the site. Administration is now enforcing disciplinary action and techniques such as installing surveillance cameras in computer labs and school libraries, along with using detention, suspension, exclusion, expulsion or banning them from school internet web access for the rest of the school year for those who refuse to follow school policies on internet access and cell phone use. [citation needed]

In May 2006, Long Island, New York teenagers Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli were charged with illegal computer access and attempted extortion of MySpace, after both had allegedly hacked into the site to steal the personal information of MySpace users before threatening to share the secrets of how they broke into the website unless MySpace paid them $150,000. Both teens were arrested by undercover Los Angeles police detectives posing as MySpace employees.[86]

In April 2007, police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a 17-year-old girl on charges of criminal damage following a party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents' house without their consent. Over 200 teenagers came to the party from across the country, causing £20,000 of damage, such as cigarette butts, urine on clothing, and writing on the walls. The girl's parents, who were away at the time, had to move out of the house.[87][88]

YouTube

YouTube first appeared on the web in early 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on MySpace due to MySpace users' ability to embed YouTube videos in their MySpace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new MySpace Videos service, MySpace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. MySpace users widely protested the ban, prompting MySpace to lift the ban shortly thereafter. But since then, links from each embedded video on MySpace to the home pages of the video on YouTube have been blocked making it more difficult to find the same videos on YouTube's website.[89]

Since then YouTube has become one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[90] outgrowing MySpace's reach according to Alexa Internet.[91] In July 2006 several news organizations reported that YouTube had overtaken MySpace.[92] In a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin claimed that virtually all modern Web applications (naming YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, Google and Photobucket) were really just "driven off the back of MySpace" and that "we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them."[93]

See also

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