MySpace - a global phenomenon?17 March 2006
Despite being created only three years ago, the website MySpace has gone on to become one of the world's biggest online communities, with almost 60 million users globally, giving it a place in search engine Alexa's list of the top five English language sites.
The site has proved not only incredibly popular but also very lucrative, as last year media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought MySpace for $580 million (£333 million).
How exactly has MySpace become so fashionable? And what does it actually allow its members to do?
e-friendships
The makers of MySpace claim that people signing up to the site will be able to create their own individual website, which could include all the homepage staples such as personal profiles, blogging, photo collections and favourite music and film lists.
The service is entirely free, with the website generating cash through adverts and banners, the presence of which has increased in line with the site's surge in popularity.
While a collection of personal homepages doesn't sound particularly inclusive or novel, MySpace has encouraged the growth of online communities by allowing people to use their 'favourite lists' to link to other users' individual sites. This not only makes it very easy for people with similar interests to contact each other, but also allows members to add other users to their list of friends.
MySpace users are known to be quite competitive about their friends' lists, with people attempting to get as many new friends in their network as possible!
Further evidence of the impact of MySpace is that instead of trading email addresses, many teenagers direct new people they meet to their personal homepage so they can get to know each other online. Expect conversations to go along the lines of: "So hey uh what are you into?" "Here's my MySpace address."
Teenage kicks
While fans of small talk may be shocked at the internet's effect upon real-life relationships, psychologists have defended networking sites such as MySpace. Dr Jo Twist, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, explained that teenagers in particular were learning valuable lessons about friendship and self-expression through their websites.
"The appeal of these sites lies in the crucial part of the adolescent socialisation process which we all go through, finding your identity, voice, place and status - the tribe with which you most identify," she said to BBC News.
Dr Twist added that the process of young people sharing their "digital assets" through sites such as MySpace amounted to "motifs that say something about who they are".
Who's that band there
If you've been following the UK music scene lately you're likely to have heard of the tuneful sensation that is the Arctic Monkeys. The four lads from Sheffield have won multiple awards and achieved record sales with their debut album - all thanks to MySpace.
Short of cash but not of ideas, the unsigned and unheard of band posted their songs for download for free on their MySpace page . By the time their first single release came about, the group already had a legion of devoted fans.
With the worldwide popularity of MySpace showing no sign of letting up, the developers of the site are widely predicted to have a UK-specific version in the pipeline, which will cater for the four million Brits already signed up.
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