MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA,[2] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City.
The company employs 300 staff[3] and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006[4] in the Netherlands[5] and a news story claimed 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[6] and the site reportedly attracts 230,000 new registrations per day.[7]
After the 2002 launch of Friendster, several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw its potential and decided to mimic the more popular features of the social networking website, in August 2003. Within 10 days, the first version of MySpace was ready for launch. [8] A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity was available for the site, right out of the gate, so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's 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 users.[9] 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,[10] 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.[11]
The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc.[12] It was intended to be a leading online data storage and sharing site up until 2002. By 2004, MySpace and MySpace.com, which existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com,[13] [14] had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. This is the natural connection to Chris DeWolfe and a friend, who reminded him he had earlier bought the URL domain, MySpace.com, intending it to be used as a web hosting site[15], since both worked at one time in the virtual data storage business, which itself was a casualty of the "dot bomb" era.
Shortly after launching the site, team member Chris DeWolfe suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service.[16] Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping MySpace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.[17]
Some employees of MySpace including DeWolfe and Berman were later able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises).[18][8] Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.[19]
In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene"[20] which they have since done. They also released a version for the China and will possibly launch similar versions in other countries.[21]
The corporate history of MySpace as well as the status of Tom Anderson as a MySpace founder has been a matter of some public dispute.
Revenue model
MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user.[22] Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, MySpace is second only to Yahoo! in it its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees.[23]
On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace.[24][25][26] MySpace has proven to be a windfall for many smaller companies that provide widgets or accessories to the social networking giant. Companies such as Slide.com, RockYou!, and YouTube were all launched on MySpace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties.[27][28]
Contents of a MySpace profile
Moods
Moods are small emoticons that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007.
Blurbs, blogs, multimedia
Profiles contain two standard "blurbs:" "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. In the "Details" section, "Status" and "Zodiac Sign" fields will always display. However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Blogging features have been a part of MySpace since 1999.
Comments
Below the User's Friends Space (by default) is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted, and replaced with the comment saying "This Profile No Longer Exists."
Profile customization (HTML)
MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me," "I'd Like to Meet," and "Interests." Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace.
A user can also change the general appearance of their page by entering CSS (in a 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 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
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
Wikinews has related news:
MySpace to take on iTunesMySpace profiles for musicians are different from normal profiles in that artists are allowed to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.
MySpace features
Bulletins
Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that.[29] They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.
Groups
MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.
MySpaceIM
Main article: MySpaceIM
In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.
MySpaceTV
In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will be probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009.
MySpace Mobile
There are a variety of environments in which users can acces