Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake
Justin Randall Timberlake is an American pop musician and actor. He achieved early fame when he appeared as a contestant on Star Search, and went on to star in the Disney Channel television series The New Mickey Mouse Club, where he met future bandmate JC Chasez...
. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors.
Myspace was founded in 2003 and was acquired by News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
in July 2005 for $580 million. From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
as the most visited website in the United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009. Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. , Myspace was ranked 103rd by total web traffic.
In June 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1,600 workers. Since then the company has undergone several rounds of layoffs and by June 2011, Myspace had reduced its staff to around 200.
On June 29, 2011, Myspace was sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for approximately $35 million.
Beginnings: 2003-2005
In August 2003, several eUniverse
Intermix Media
Intermix Media, Inc. was a Los Angeles-based Internet marketing company founded in 1998 that owned the MySpace website...
employees with Friendster
Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
accounts saw potential in its model and decided to mimic the more popular features of the social networking website. Within 10 days, the first version of Myspace was ready for launch, implemented using ColdFusion
In computing, ColdFusion is the name of a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by version 2 it had...
. A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
, and server capacity was available for the site. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan
Brad Greenspan
Brad Greenspan is an internet entrepreneur who has been involved in the founding and proliferation of web properties including MySpace. Greenspan founded eUniverse Inc. in 1998, which went public in 1999. The company survived the .com-bust of 2001 and was the incubator that launched MySpace.com in...
(eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe
Chris DeWolfe
Chris DeWolfe is an American entrepreneur, and one of the creators of Myspace , of which he is also the former CEO. He has the sixth account ever made on the site. During DeWolfe's tenure, MySpace became the top social network, with over 135 million worldwide unique visitors a month...
(MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson
Tom Anderson may refer to:*Tom Anderson , entrepreneur and co-founder of MySpace*Tom Anderson , former member of the Alaska State Legislature...
(MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.
The first Myspace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign up the most users. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to breathe life into MySpace, 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.
The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc. It was intended to be an online data storage and sharing site until 2002. By 2004, Myspace and MySpace.com, which existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com, had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. This is the 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, since both worked in the virtual data storage business, which itself was a casualty of the "dot bomb" era.
DeWolfe suggested they charge a fee for the basic Myspace service. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping Myspace free was necessary to make it a successful community.
Rise to popularity: 2005-2008
Some employees of Myspace, including DeWolfe and Berman, were able to purchase equity
Equity (finance)
In accounting and finance, equity is the residual claim or interest of the most junior class of investors in assets, after all liabilities are paid. If liability exceeds assets, negative equity exists...
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
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
's News Corporation
(the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises). Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of Myspace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion
Fairness opinion
A fairness opinion is a professional evaluation by an investment bank or other third party as to whether the terms of a merger, acquisition, buyback, spin-off, or going private are fair...
In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of Myspace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene" which they have since done. They released a version in China and have since launched similar versions in other countries.
The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the Netherlands.
On November 1, 2007, Myspace and Bebo
Bebo is a social networking website launched in July 2005. It is currently owned and operated by Criterion Capital Partners after taking over from AOL in June 2010....
joined the Google
-led OpenSocial alliance
OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks.It was released November 1, 2007....
, which already includes Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning and SixApart. OpenSocial was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks. Facebook remained independent. Google had been unsuccessful in building its own social networking site (Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships...
was succeeding in Brazil but struggling in the U.S.) and was using the alliance to present a counterweight to Facebook.
By late 2007 into 2008, Myspace was considered the leading social networking site, and consistently beat out main competitor Facebook in traffic. At its peak, when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in 2007, Myspace was valued at $12 billion.
Decline: 2008–present
On April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook Myspace in the Alexa
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
rankings. Since then, Myspace has seen a continuing loss of membership, and there are several suggestions for its decline.
One claim is that Myspace failed to innovate and stuck to a "portal strategy" of building an audience around entertainment and music, whereas Facebook and Twitter continually launched new features to improve the social-networking experience.
A former Myspace executive suggested that the US$900 million three year advertisement deal with Google, while being a short-term cash windfall, was a handicap in the long run. That deal required Myspace to place even more ads on its already heavily advertised space, which made the site slow, more difficult to use, and less flexible. Myspace could not experiment with its own site without forfeiting revenue, while rival Facebook was rolling out a new clean site design.
While Facebook focused on creating a platform that allowed outside developers to build new applications, Myspace built everything in-house. Shawn Gold, Myspace's former head of marketing and content, said "Myspace went too wide and not deep enough in its product development. We went with a lot of products that were shallow and not the best products in the world." The products division had introduced many features (communication tools such as instant messaging, a classifieds program, a video player, a music player, a virtual karaoke machine, a self-serve advertising platform, profile-editing tools, security systems, privacy filters, and Myspace book lists, among others), however these were often buggy and slow as there was insufficient testing, measuring, and iterating.
Danah Boyd
danah boyd also known as Danah Michele Boyd, is an American social media researcher known for her public commentary on the use of social networking sites by youth...
, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...
, noted of social networking websites that Myspace and others were a very peculiar business—one in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear, as "Influential peers pull others in on the climb up—and signal to flee when it's time to get out". The volatility of social networks was exemplified in 2006 when Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
Richard Blumenthal is the junior United States Senator from Connecticut and a member of the Democratic Party. Previously, he served as Attorney General of Connecticut....
launched an investigation into minors' exposure to pornography on Myspace; the resulting media frenzy and Myspace's inability to build an effective spam filter gave the site a reputation as a "vortex of perversion". Around that time, specialized social media companies such as Twitter formed and began targeting Myspace users, while Facebook rolled out communication tools which were seen as safe in comparison to Myspace. Boyd compared the shift of white, middle-class kids from the "seedy" Myspace to the "supposedly safer haven" of Facebook, to the "white flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
" from American cities; the perception of Myspace eventually drove advertisers away as well. In addition, Myspace had particular problems with vandalism, phishing, malware and spam which it failed to curtail, making the site seem inhospitable.
These have been cited as factors why users, who as teens were Myspace's strongest audience in 2006 and 2007, have been migrating to Facebook. Facebook which started strong with the 18-to-24 group (mostly college students) has been much more successful than Myspace at attracting older users.
In 2009, around the time that Myspace underwent layoffs and a management shakeup, the site "relied on drastic redesigns as Hail Mary pass
Hail Mary pass
A Hail Mary pass or Hail Mary route in American football refers to any very long forward pass made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half....
es to get users back". However this may have backfired for Myspace, as it is noted that users generally disliked interface tweaks on rival Facebook
(which avoided major site redesigns).
Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch
was said to be frustrated that Myspace never met expectations, as a distribution outlet for Fox studio content, and missing the US$1 billion mark in total revenues. That resulted in DeWolfe and Anderson gradually losing their status within Murdoch's inner circle of executives, plus DeWolfe's mentor Peter Chernin
Peter Chernin
Peter Chernin currently owns and runs Chernin Entertainment and The Chernin Group, both of which he founded in 2009. He was formerly President and COO of News Corporation, and Chairman and CEO of Fox Entertainment Group. He is a Corporate Director for American Express and sits on the Board of...
, the President and COO of News Corp. who was based in Los Angeles, departed the company. Former AOL executive Jonathan Miller, who joined News Corp in charge of the digital media business, was in the job for three weeks when he shuffled Myspace's executive team in April 2009. Myspace President Tom Anderson stepped down while Chris DeWolfe was replaced as Myspace CEO by former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta
Owen Van Natta
Owen Van Natta is currently the Executive Vice President of Business at Zynga, an internet company that makes online social games. In this position, Van Natta is responsible for the company's revenue strategy, corporate development, international expansion and brand. Prior to officially joining...
. News Corp. A meeting in March 2009 over the direction of Myspace was reportedly the catalyst for that management shakeup, with the Google search deal about to expire, the departure of key personnel (Myspace's COO, SVP of engineering, and SVP of strategy) to form a startup. Myspace's chief operating officer, senior vice-president for engineering. Furthermore, the opening of extravagant new offices around the world was questioned, as rival Facebook didn't have similarly expensive expansion plans yet it still attracted international users at a rapid rate. The changes to Myspace's executive ranks was followed in June 2009 by a layoff of 30% of its workforce, reducing employees from 1,600 to 1,000.
Myspace has attempted to redefine itself as a social entertainment website, with more of a focus on music, movies, celebrities and TV, instead of a social networking website. Myspace also developed a linkup with Facebook that would allow musicians and bands to manage their Facebook profiles. CEO Mike Jones was quoted as saying that Myspace now is a "complementary offer" to Facebook Inc., which is "not a rival anymore."
In March 2011, market research figures released by comScore
comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....
suggested that Myspace had lost 10 million users between January and February 2011, and that it had fallen from 95 million to 63 million unique users during the previous twelve months. Myspace registered its sharpest audience declines in the month of February 2011, as traffic fell 44% from a year earlier to 37.7 million unique U.S. visitors. Advertisers have been reported as unwilling to commit to long term deals with the site.
In late February 2011, News Corp officially put the site up for sale, which was estimated to be worth $50–200 million. Losses from last quarter of 2010 were $156 million, over double of the previous year, which dragged down the otherwise strong results of parent News Corp. The deadline for bids, May 31, 2011, passed without any above the reserve price of $100 million being submitted It has been said that the rapid deterioration in Myspace's business during the most recent quarter deterred many potent suitors.
On June 29, 2011, Myspace announced to label partners and press via email that it had been acquired by Specific Media for an undisclosed sum. As announced in the release, "[...] as part of the deal, Emmy and Grammy winning artist Justin Timberlake
will also take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward. Specific Media and Timberlake plan to unveil their vision for the site in an exclusive press conference later this summer."
CNN reported that Myspace sold for $35 million, and noted that it was "far less than the $580 million News Corp. paid for Myspace in 2005."
Many former executives have continued to be successful after departing Myspace.
Many games operated by popular developers such as Zynga, RockYou, and Playdom, have recently been shut down on Myspace. Among such games is the previously popular game Mafia Wars.
In September of 2011, Myspace fell below Tagged in total monthly visits.
Myspace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user. 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
Behavioral targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select...
to select the ads each visitor sees.
On August 8, 2006, search engine Google
signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on Myspace. 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
Slide.com
Slide, Inc., operator of the Slide.com website, is a Web 2.0 company founded by Max Levchin and based in San Francisco, California. Originally formed to make photo sharing software for social networking services such as MySpace, the company achieved its greatest success as the largest developer of...
, 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.
In November 2008, Myspace announced that user-uploaded content that infringed on copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with advertisements that would generate revenue for the companies.
In 2009, Myspace also added a new status update feature. If a Myspace user has a Twitter account, the tweet will also update the Myspace status. (Facebook also has a similar feature.) It does, however, require that the two accounts be synched
Synchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....
up together.
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. They have also become the primary attack point for phishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.
Myspace had a 'Groups' feature that allowed a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups could be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group could choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join. In November 2010, the group feature was turned off; a user clicking on the "Groups" link in the features menu was led to a page that announced that groups were being revamped, and the user could sign up to be informed of when groups would come back. A similar message has been posted repeatedly in the Help page. No date for the reappearance of the group has been mentioned.
In early 2006, Myspace introduced MySpaceIM
MySpaceIM
MySpaceIM is the official instant messaging client for the social networking site MySpace.In 2009, a web-based client dubbed was released to all English-speaking countries, allowing users to interact with friends and non-friends alike to grow their network...
, 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
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new Myspace messages, friend requests, and comments. MySpaceIM was added as a default feature of Myspace by the end of 2009.
In early 2007, Myspace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing
Video sharing
Video hosting services refers to websites or software where users can distribute their video clips. Other sites such as file hosting services image hosting services and social network services might support video sharing as an enhancement to their primary mission, but in general, they are not...
website. Myspace has been showing videos as early as 2006, but it has changed it name to MySpaceTV for a while. In 2009, MySpaceTV reverted back to Myspace Video once again. Myspace Video continues to be not as popular as other video sharing sites such as YouTube, but many sites had partnered with Myspace such as Hulu
Hulu is a website and over-the-top subscription service offering ad-supported on-demand streaming video of TV shows, movies, webisodes and other new media, trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes footage from NBC, Fox, ABC, and Obstacle on October 20th 2011 Nickelodeon and CBS and many other...
to promote their media to the Myspace community.
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. Many applications that are popular on Myspace had spin off versions on Facebook. The Myspace app Mafia Wars has became a Facebook sensation as well. On the other hand, Facebook applications such as Bumper Stickers and Farmville has been used in Myspace and was popular as well. Many application partnerships such as Zygna and Slide has been responsible from creating third party apps for use on both Myspace and Facebook, along with for use in the iTunes app store.
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. Additionally, UIEvolution and Myspace developed a mobile version of Myspace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T, Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
and Rogers Wireless
Rogers Wireless is a wireless telecommunications provider offering mobile phone and data services throughout Canada using Global System for Mobile Communications and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System technology. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications...
In April 2007, Myspace launched a news service called Myspace News which displays news from RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
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.
Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. It 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.
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.
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 uses an implementation of Telligent Community for its forum system.
Moods are small emoticon
An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer's mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word...
s that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007. The mood feature as of 2010 is not included by default with the status updates, but could be shared on the homepage as a separate update.
Blurbs, blogs, multimedia
Profiles contain two standard "blurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
s": "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
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
", 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. A photo editor powered by Fotoflexer
Fotoflexer
FotoFlexer is an online digital photo editing service. It attempts to bring professional grade photo editing suites online for those without access to professionals or expensive software such as Photoshop. Fotoflexer provides image editing for MySpace and Photobucket...
is available which can not only crop images and adjust contrast but also convert the image to a cartoon or a line drawing made with neon lights, or put the user's face in a photo of a $100 bill. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded
Compound document
In computing, a compound document is a document type typically produced using word processing software, and is a regular text document intermingled with non-text elements such as spreadsheets, pictures, digital videos, digital audio, and other multimedia features...
. Blogging features are also available. These features could be hidden on a profile by using the module customizer or using HTML/CSS codes. Photos could be displayed on the Myspace profile instead of a link that it was used in previous years. Photos can be made into a slide show.
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 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". The option of using HTML in comments could be enabled or disabled.
Profile customization (HTML/CSS)
Myspace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
(but not JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
) 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
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
(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.
In 2008, Myspace launched a new Profile 2.0 as the next generation of the Myspace profile. Profile 2.0 features a cleaner interface and the ability to hide or show modules of the profile, along with customize the position of the module on the profile. Profile 2.0 layouts were released on the internet quickly as the use of the classic Myspace layouts do not work with profile 2.0. Profile 2.0 also was criticized for not looking right when trying to add custom CSS. To add custom CSS, the original theme has to be scrapped and many Myspace tweaks were not functional in the Profile 2.0 layout. In 2010, Myspace abandoned the Profile 1.0 layout and made Profile 2.0 the standard features of the profile. That promoted a cleaner interface and many themes are prepackaged with the customizer, along with the make a custom theme using various parameters of profile editing. Applications are used for decoration. While Profile 2.0 was the standard layout, a new profile was launched as an optional upgrade. The new profile was launched to keep up with the trends of the modern profile interface and attempts to give it a simpler and more mature design. Profile 3.0 intends to enable users more flexible customization and simpler theme building, but is not much different from the Profile 2.0 interface.
Myspace profiles for musicians in the website's Myspace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload their entire discographies consisting of 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
SNOCAP
BackgroundThe company was founded by Shawn Fanning , Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April...
, 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
MySpace Records
Myspace Records is a record label founded in 2005 to sign artists who appear on the social networking site MySpace. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of MySpace and parent News Corporation, operating as a joint-venture between MySpace and Interscope Records...
, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on Myspace Music.
Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, artists can upload their songs onto Myspace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lily Allen
Lily Rose Beatrice Cooper , better known as Lily Allen, is an English recording artist and fashion designer. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. In her teenage years, her musical tastes evolved from glam rock to alternative...
and Sean Kingston
Sean Kingston is a Jamaican-American singer. He pursued a music career and debuted in 2007 with the album Sean Kingston.-Early life:...
gained fame through Myspace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by Myspace and many more continue to be discovered daily. In late 2007, the site launched The Myspace Transmissions
The MySpace Transmissions
The MySpace Transmissions are a series of digital EPs recorded for MySpace Music. The series was launched on December 4, 2007 with James Blunt as the first featured artist...
, a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists.
Myspace, in 2008, redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist
Playlist.com
Playlist, Inc. operates the playlist.com website and is a company that provides widgets for MySpace, myYearbook and Facebook.-History:...
that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
and Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
. In March 2010, listening to the full song in the search results has been disable and had been replaced by 30 second samples. Myspace music also suggests songs based on the songs you are currently listening to or the songs you had added to the playlist, making it as a music discovery tool. Myspace Music also added an improved playlist feature and artist profile, along with better music suggestion features, making it one of the highest rated and advanced music discovery sites on the Web. The site features charts similar to Billboard charts and it keeps track of the most popular music liked by users of all genres. It also enables user to view popular music in other countries of the world, mostly in Europe and major Asian countries such as China and Russia
Redesigns
Throughout 2007 and 2008, Myspace redesigned many of the features of its site in both layout and in function. One of the first functions to be redesigned was the user home page, with features such as status updates, applications, and subscriptions being added in order to compete with Facebook. In 2008, the Myspace homepage was redesigned. Myspace Music was redecorated in 2008 and 2009, making it more like an online music store similar to iTunes
and Rhapsody
Rhapsody (online music service)
Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version...
, along with the ability to create playlists. The use of Playlist.com
on Myspace was abolished after the new Myspace music was launched. Some of the classic features of Myspace music, such as the artist directory, were also abolished.
On March 10, 2010, Myspace had some new features added like recommendation engine for new users which suggests games, music and videos based on their previous search habits. The security on Myspace was also accounted to, with the criticism of Facebook
Facebook's growth as an Internet social networking site has met criticism on a range of issues, including online privacy, child safety, and the inability to terminate accounts without first manually deleting the content. In 2008, many companies removed their advertising from the site because it was...
, to make it a safer site. The security of Myspace enables users to choose if the content could be viewed for Friends Only, 18 and older, or Everyone. The website will also release several mobile micro applications for Myspace gamers besides sending them games alerts. The site may release 20 to 30 micro apps and go mobile in 2011.
In Summer 2010, the color scene of Myspace changed. The classic blue was replaced by a more white interface, to resemble the look and feel of Facebook, and to attract users of Facebook to join or rejoin Myspace. The simplification of the navigation bar also made it easier to find features quickly. In August 2010, the home page was modified to give new room for the Myspace Stream and to make it resemble Facebook further. Profile 3.0 was launched as well, which was an upgrade from profile 2.0. That enabled users to have more creativity with a simpler interface. Templates, like profile 2.0, are added too but it also enabled simpler template creation methods and module control. Building templates has become simpler; without the use of custom HTML or CSS, users can upload photos from their computers or find background images on the Internet by typing a URL, to give it more of a personal, more sentimental and individualist image than the prepackaged layout sites that were used before. HTML and CSS can be still used on the profile, but an HTML or CSS module must be added to promote a neater layout but still use the sponsored layout sites.
In September 2010, Myspace continued to work on improving the website. A photos section was added and the Fotoflexer app was added to photos. Myspace also enabled users to integrate their Myspace activity to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, to attract and show others that they are still on Myspace and to bring users back to Myspace. Myspace Movies was also added to promote movies and movie related media.
In October 2010, Myspace introduced a beta version of a new site design on a limited scale, with plans to switch all interested users to the new site in late November. Chief executive Mike Jones said the site is no longer competing with Facebook as a general social networking site. Instead, Myspace would be music-oriented and would target younger people. Jones believed most younger users would continue to use the site after the redesign, though older users might not. The goal of the redesign is to increase the number of Myspace users and how long they spend there. On October 26, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said, "Most investors have written off MySpace now," and he was unsure whether the changes would help the company recover.
In November 2010, MySpace changed its logo to coincide with the new site design. The word "my" appears in the Helvetica
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....
font, followed by a symbol delineating a space. The logo change was announced on October 8, 2010 and appeared on the site on November 11, 2010. Also that month, MySpace integrated with Facebook Connect – calling it "Mash Up with Facebook" in an announcement widely seen as the final act of acknowledging Facebook's domination of the social networking industry.
In January 2011 it was announced that the Myspace staff would be reduced by 47%. Despite the new design, user adoption continued to decrease.
Myspace has met criticism on a range of issues, including online privacy, child safety, and censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
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
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen reader
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen . This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device...
s. The Myspace home page, as of May 20, 2009, failed HTML validation with around 101 errors (the number changes on sequential validations of the home page due to dynamic content), using the W3C's validator.
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
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet or an intranet . This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development...
, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed Myspace profiles could potentially freeze up web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth
objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
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
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
cited this as its main reason for naming Myspace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.
In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by "Samy
Samy (XSS)
Samy was an XSS worm developed to propagate across the MySpace social-networking site. At the time of release, it gained significant media attention....
" to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm
. MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
has reported that "social-networking sites like Myspace are turning out to be hotbeds for spyware," and "infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com." 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.
More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing. Users find their Myspace homepage with bulletins they did not 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
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
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.
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://en.wikipedia.org would be changed to http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZwhttp (The new links are determined by Base64
Base64 is a group of similar encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation...
encoding, as there are ways of decoding the link back into its original URL.) 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 state 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.
On January 26, 2008, over 567,000 private Myspace user pictures were downloaded from the site by using a bug published on YouTube and put on the Piratebay torrent site for download.
In 2010, the company was criticzied, along with other social networks, for passing user personally identifiable profile information to advertisers when members clicked on ads.
Myspace party problems
Myspace is often used as a venue for publicizing parties, sometimes with the host's knowledge and sometimes without. There have been some well-publicized incidents where Myspace parties have caused thousands of dollars damage to property, and even (in at least one case) loss of life.
A party hosted by Corey Worthington, a sixteen-year-old boy from Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, and advertised on MySpace, attracted 500 people. Police cars were attacked, and the dog squad and a helicopter were called in. The incident received international coverage. (Worthington subsequently found work as a party promoter, and appeared on the Ten Network's Australian version of Big Brother
Big Brother Australia 2008
Big Brother Australia 2008 was the eighth season of the Australian reality television series, Big Brother Australia to air on Network Ten. Episodes were broadcast on Network Ten and Ten HD in Australia. The first episode aired on 28 April 2008. Since then, there has been a total 20 housemates...
.) The Sydney Morning Heralds online technology writer, Asher Moses, has noted 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."
In April 2007, a seventeen-year-old British girl hosted a party after distributing information about it on Myspace that was reportedly subtitled "Let's trash the average family-sized house disco party." Her parents were left with an approximately £24,000 ($48,000) bill from police.
Allen Joplin, a seventeen-year-old American high school student from Seattle, was shot dead at a party that had been publicized through Myspace.
The minimum age to register an account on Myspace is 13, but it was 14 at one time and some still think of it as being 14. Profiles with ages set from 13 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. In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders.
Recently, Myspace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by Myspace. Stricter methods for enforcing age admission will be enforced in the future, such as blocking a person from accessing Myspace using a computer's IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
. 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 13 to 15 years as friends unless they already know the user's full name or email address. Some third party Internet safety companies such as Social Shield have launched online communities for parents concerned about their child's safety on Myspace.
In June 2006, sixteen-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 twenty-year-old man she met through Myspace. U.S. officials in Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.
In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier
Suicide of Megan Meier
Megan Taylor Meier , was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, who committed suicide by hanging three weeks before her fourteenth birthday. A year later, Meier's parents prompted an investigation into the matter and her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social...
committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying
Cyber-bullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. As it has become more common in society, particularly among young people, legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it.-Definition:The term...
instigated by the mother of a friend who had posed as a sixteen-year-old named "Josh Evans".
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.
In February 2007, a U.S. District Judge
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
in Texas dismissed a case when a family sued MySpace
Doe v MySpace
Doe v. MySpace, 528 F.3d 413 is a 2008 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that affirmed a lower court decision finding that MySpace was immune under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 from liability resulting from a sexual assault of a minor...
for negligence
Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...
, fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, and misrepresentation
Misrepresentation is a contract law concept. It means a false statement of fact made by one party to another party, which has the effect of inducing that party into the contract. For example, under certain circumstances, false statements or promises made by a seller of goods regarding the quality...
; a girl in the family had been sexually assaulted
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
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
Sam Sparks
Sam Sparks is a federal judge in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.- Early life :After graduating from Austin High School as senior class president, Sparks received an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in 1961 where he was a member of the Texas...
wrote: "If anyone had a duty to protect young girls, it was her parents, not MySpace."
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.
Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
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
Julie McCullough
Julie Michelle McCullough is an American model, actress and stand-up comedian. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for February 1986, and played "Julie Costello" on Growing Pains until she was fired on series regular Kirk Cameron's insistence, for having posed nude in Playboy...
, 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
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
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:
Controversy over corporate history
After the sale of Myspace to News Corp, Brad Greenspan
(the former CEO, founder, and shareholder of Intermix Media the parent company that owned and launched MySpace.com) contested the sale of the company to News Corp. Greenspan claimed that new Intermix Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt
Richard Rosenblatt
Richard Rosenblatt is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media. He has built, operated, and sold over $1.3 billion of Internet media companies.-Early life:...
and other board members cheated shareholders by selling the company for less than it was actually worth. Valleywag
Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired, the blog was taken over by Owen Thomas. Thomas himself left in May 2009, to be replaced by Ryan...
, a gossip blog that reported on the allegations, also claimed that founder and public face of MySpace, Tom Anderson
, was a public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
invention. It was later confirmed by Newsweek that Anderson's age on the site had been lowered to "appeal" to younger users.
In October 2006, Greenspan published "The Myspace Report" on a personal website, calling for government investigation into News Corp's acquisition of Myspace. Greenspan's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued Myspace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process. However the report was not widely accepted by the financial press and a lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.
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 attempting to force users away from using certain third-party Flash applications on their profiles.
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.
MySpace China
The simplified 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
Taiwan independence
Taiwan independence is a political movement whose goals are primarily to formally establish the Republic of Taiwan by renaming or replacing the Republic of China , form a Taiwanese national identity, reject unification and One country, two systems with the People's Republic of China and a Chinese...
, the Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
, Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added. 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."
Religious and political discrimination
Throughout 2007 and 2008, Myspace was accused of deleting the Atheist and Agnostic Group
Atheist and Agnostic Group
The Atheist and Agnostic Group, founded on June 13, 2004, is an internet forum with approximately 35,000 members on the social networking site MySpace targeted toward atheists and agnostics...
twice, deleting a pro-choice group, as well as banning individual Myspace users purely because of complaints from Christians who were offended by the groups and members, even though none of them had violated the site's Terms of Service.
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 Global
Myspace Australia
Myspace Brazil (currently in beta)
Myspace Canada (currently in beta)
Myspace China (currently in beta)
Myspace Denmark
Myspace France
Myspace Finland
Myspace Germany (currently in beta)
Myspace Greece
Myspace Ireland
Myspace Latin America (currently in beta)
Myspace India (currently in beta)
Myspace Italy (currently in beta)
Myspace Japan (currently in beta)
Myspace Korea (currently in beta)
Myspace Mexico
Myspace Netherlands
Myspace New Zealand
Myspace Poland (currently in beta)
Myspace Portugal
Myspace Russia (currently in beta)
Myspace Spain
Myspace Sweden
Myspace Turkey (currently in beta)
Myspace UK
Myspace USA (this is, in fact, identical to the "global" site)
Myspace USA
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 Facebook's developer platform. The first public beta of the Myspace Apps was released on March 5, 2008, with around 1,000 applications available.
Myspace server infrastructure
At QCon London 2008, Myspace Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino indicated that Myspace was sending 100 gigabits of data per second out to the Internet, of which 10 gigabits was HTML
content and the remainder was media such as videos and pictures. The server infrastructure consists of over 4,500 web servers (running Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
, IIS
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
6.0, ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...
and .Net Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
3.5), over 1,200 cache servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003), and over 500 database servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005) as well as a custom distributed file system which runs on Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
As of 2009, Myspace has started migrating from HDD to SSD
A solid-state drive , sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive...
technology in some of their servers, resulting in space and power usage savings.
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
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
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. 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."
Multiple schools, public libraries, and employers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Australia and Malaysia have restricted access to MySpace, seeing it as "a haven for gossip and malicious comments."
A Catholic school in New Jersey has 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 and if it is constitutional. In autumn of 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School
Pope John XXIII Regional High School
Pope John XXIII Regional High School is a Roman Catholic high school in Sparta Township, New Jersey. The school was founded in 1956, originally as Our Lady Of The Lake School, and is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson...
in Sparta Township
Sparta Township, New Jersey
Sparta Township is a Township in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 19,722...
, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on Myspace or similar websites (such as Gaia
Gaia Online is an English-language, anime-themed social networking and forums-based website. Gaiaonline was founded in 2003. but the name was changed to GaiaOnline.com in 2003 from go-gaia by its owner, Gaia Interactive...
) under threat of suspension or expulsion.
In Turkey, Myspace had been blocked on September 19, 2009, due to copyright issues of MÜ-YAP. Turkish rock musician Aylin Aslım
Aylin Aslim
Aylin Aslım is a Turkish singer/songwriter.Aylin was born in Lich, Hessen, Germany into a Turkish family but moved back to Turkey when she was only one year old. She sang in several rock and electronica bands in several clubs in Istanbul. Her first album Gelgit -released in 2000 was more of an...
, who has a Myspace account said the block was a serious violation of rights for independent musicians of Turkey. As of October 6, the block has been lifted.
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
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
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.
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.
Acquisition of Imeem
On November 18, 2009, Imeem
The online service imeem was a social media web site where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos...
was acquired by Myspace Music for an undisclosed amount. After the acquisition was completed on December 8, 2009, it was confirmed that Myspace Music bought Imeem for less than US$1 million in cash. Myspace has also stated that they will be transitioning Imeem's users, and migrating all their play lists over to Myspace Music. On January 15, 2010, Myspace began restoring Imeem playlists.
YouTube debuted in April 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.
Since then YouTube has become one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, outgrowing MySpace's reach according to Alexa Internet
. In July 2006 several news organizations reported that YouTube had overtaken Myspace. In a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin
stated that: "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it's Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
, whether it's Photobucket
Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007....
or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace. Given that most of their traffic comes from us if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them."
New owner directions and developments
"I don't have anything on my plate other than think-tanking a lot of different ideas for MySpace," Justin Timberlake tells MTV News in the fall of 2011.
gOS 2.9 "Space" - Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
distribution geared toward Myspace users, see gOS (operating system)
GOS (operating system)
gOS or "good OS" was an Ubuntu-based GNU/Linux distribution created by Good OS LLC, a Los Angeles-based corporation. Its CIO Dave Liu described that after meeting Enlightenment and open source people, he realized that his dream to bring Web 2.0 applications into mainstream use could be achieved by...
List of Internet phenomena
List of social networking websites
List of virtual communities with more than 100 million users
MyDeathSpace.com is a website devoted to connecting the deaths of MySpace account-holders to their news obituaries. It is notable due to media attention that it garnered over the practice of seeking out dead MySpace users such as Taylor Behl and Anna Svidersky.It launched in January 2006, but did...
Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...
SodaHead.com
SodaHead is an online community that features a combination of content creation and redistribution.The company is headquartered in Encino, California. SodaHead is privately held and its investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Mission Ventures and the Tech Coast Angels, as well as angel investor...
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a service that helps users tired of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, to "commit suicide in social networks," by automatically "removing their private content and friend relationships," .To start the suicide process, the user has to provide his login credential...
Angwin, Julia. 2009. Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America, New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6694-0
Davis, Donald Carrington, Myspace Isn't Your Space: Expanding the Fair Credit Reporting Act to Ensure Accountability and Fairness in Employer Searches of Online Social Networking Services, 16 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 237 (2007).
Dodero, Camille, "Lost in MySpace: Log on, tune in, and hook up with 22 million people online", The Boston Phoenix
The Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
, July 22–28, 2005.
Dodero, Camille, "You and your tech-chic: As of 2006, new media isn't just for geeks anymore", The Boston Phoenix, December 20, 2006.
Tapscott, Don
Don Tapscott is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. Tapscott is chairman of business strategy think tank New Paradigm , which he founded in 1993...
and Anthony D. Williams. 2007. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Penguin.