Information AboutMyspace |
MySpace is a popular , 2007 . where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media ; in turn, the owner of Fox Interactive and therefore MySpace, News Corporation , is headquartered in New York City . As of September 7, 2007, there are over 200 million accounts. HISTORY The MySpace service was founded in (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's current CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's current 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 usershttp://freemyspace.com/08-28-03.JPG 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 {Link without Title} , 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.http://freemyspace.com/09-03-03-f.jpg Shortly after launching MySpace, team member Chris Dewolfe in its first business plan suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service.http://freemyspace.com/I-2.jpg Brad Greenspan nixed the idea.http://freemyspace.com/?q=node/13 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’) were bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch 's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#_note-2 Of this amount, approx. US$327m has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial advisor fairness opinion.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#_note-3 They also released it in China and will possibly launch it in other countries. MySpace China, Germany, and France this Summer? 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 . CONTENTS OF A MYSPACE PROFILE Blurbs, blogs, multimedia Profiles contain two standard " 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. Also there is a "details" section which allows the user to provide personal information on the user such as his/her Race , Religion , and Sexual Orientation . In May 2007, a very popular Myspace Group called "I Support" reported that the sexual orientation feature of Myspace had removed the option of "gay." Myspace states that this was an error caused by a bug in the system - it now lists gay/lesbian as a sexual orientation option. Friend Space The User's Friends Space contains a count of a user's friends, a "Top Friends" area, and a link to view all of the user's friends. Users can choose a certain number of friends to be displayed on their profile in the "Top Friends" area. The "Top Friends" used to be restricted to eight friends, commonly called the "Top 8." People bypassed this limitation by using third-party tools to emulate a "Top X" friends. MySpace now allows four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, and now up to and including forty friends to be displayed in the "Top Friends" area. If a friend's page has been deleted, blank spaces will be shown on the pages. If the user clicks onto "edit friends," there will be a block that says, "this profile no longer exists." Before the "Top 8" system was put in place, the eight friends displayed on the user's profile were the first eight friends to sign up for Myspace. When the user's entire friend list is viewed, their top friends will be displayed first, followed by all of their other friends in order of their ID number. 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." Comments have been the real engine behind MySpace. Many sites were developed to offer HTML comments like MySpace comments. These HTML comments are mainly links to images on other sites, and offer bandwidth in return for visitors. Bulletins Bulletins are messages that are posted on the bulletin board so that every friend the user has can see what the user is saying. Bulletins are commonly used to tell other users about updates on their profile, experiences, etc. 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 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, but it has its limitations due to poorly-structured HTML used on the profile page. 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. Music MySpace profiles for Musician s are different from normal profiles in that artists are allowed to Upload up to four MP3 songs. Though recently myspace has promoted the ability to add up to five songs, instead of four by artists adding a company to their friends list. 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, which has proven popular among MySpace users. 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 notifying an entire, but usually a portion of the friends list (depending on how many friends are added), 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. Chit Chat 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 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. MySpace Mobile 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. 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 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. Brad Greenspan / The MySpace Report 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.6 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 Limited Customer Service Myspace endeavors to provide expansive Help Menu information and a continuous stream communicating documented bugs and errors. A good share of end user issues are likely mitigated from Myspace's help menu options. In addition, there are a small number of supplemental site Web Email Forms for requests in case direction from the menus provided are inadequate. However, responsiveness has been particularly slow or absent in the case of email address changes, and special requests for account deletion. Phony Sockpuppet accounts that can sometimes be Slander ous and/or confusing are not immediately deleted upon request.7 Also, due to the low levels of credentials required to set up an account, would-be creators of false accounts even after an initial deletion can easily repeat the offense without fear of restriction, censorship or reprisal. To compound potential issues, MySpace has no Customer Service telephone number readily available for the public8, and contacting them for help via any other available corporate phone numbers rarely yields substantial results. Accessibility 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 Reader s.9 The MySpace home page, as of September 1, 2007, fails HTML validation with 120 errors using the W3C's [http://validator.w3.org/ validator . Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customise 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 Browser s 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 soundfiles are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). ''PC World'' cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.10 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 Server s 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. Security | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Url | http://wwwtheregistercouk/2006/08/07/google_wins_myspace/ |
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| Title | Google pays $900m to monetise children via MySpace |
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| Publisher | The Register |
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| Last | Vance |
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| First | Ashlee |
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| Date | 2006-08-07 |
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| Accessdate | 2006-09-09 |
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