Post No.2 - MySpace Origins

So I've been a member of MySpace for over a week now, I've been given suggestions from other people on ways to customise my page and have been able to create a much more personalised color scheme. I have been able to find more of my 'real world' friends that have pages that I didn't know about, through looking at the pages of other friends. I've also added a 'celebrity' to my friends list. Hayden Panettiere from Heroes has a MySpace page where she posts music tracks of hers for people to listen to. -Which was my only experience with MySpace before I signed up myself.

MySpace was launched in January 2004, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought MySpace in July 2006 for $580 million, however they have kept DeWolfe and Anderson still at the reins as CEO and president. Originally created as an alternative of Friendster.com, MySpace became a place where musicians could share their music with the public, and has since launched the careers of artists who would otherwise be virtually unknown. Friends can also share the music they like by adding songs as background music for their MySpace page, or creating a playlist feature to choose tracks from. As well, people can post videos of all varieties into their pages.MySpace has also recently created its own record label which has released artists, such as rap band 'Hollywood Dead', which developed a large fan following on MySpace.

MySpace has become the new teen culture, in the sense that before teens would spend hours talking on the phone, they now spend hours posting comments on friends pages, browsing the pages of strangers and making new friends, as well as spending a great deal of time creating the look of their own pages. 'Pimpmyspace.org' is a site that has thousands of images and tools to create the desired look. Through searching this site you can search for certain themes or characters, or browse through the categories. Once you find something you want, you copy the html code provided straight into the area you want it to go on your MySpace page. I tested this out myself, with a 'glittering' Care Bears gif image. It just gives a little 'pizzazz' to the page.

A few years ago when meeting new people, we would trade email and msn addresses. Now every time I make a new friend, they ask me if I have MySpace. I have friends who don't use email but will happily contact you through MySpace. -Which I find a tad ridiculous!


Internet Links used for the creation of this post:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-01-08-myspace-teens_x.htm
http://www.pimpmyspace.org/


-Carlie Sheehan