Company name	Myspace
Company slogan	A Place for Friends
Owner	Specific Media
Company logo
Company type	Private
Foundation	Santa Monica, California (2003)
Location city	Beverly Hills, California
Location country	US
area served	Worldwide
Key people	Tom Anderson (Co-Founder)/(ex-President) Chris DeWolfe (Co-Founder)/(ex-CEO) Owen Van Natta (ex-CEO) Mike Jones (Co-President) Jason Hirschhorn (Co-President)
Num employees	200-250
Url	myspace.com
Alexa	87 ()
Ipv6	No
Registration	Required
Num users	50 million (July 2011)
Launch date	August 2003
Current status	Active
Language	15 languages
Advertising	Google, AdSense
Website type	Social networking service
Revenue	$385 million (2009 est.)

Myspace, stylized My_____ and previously MySpace, is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California.

Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006, a position that it held throughout 2007 until 2008. However by April 2008, according to comScore, Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, based on monthly unique visitors. Since then MySpace has declined steadily in spite of several drastic redesigns. Quantcast estimates MySpace's monthly U.S. unique visitors at 19.7 million as of May 2011. The site ranking of Myspace was 85, as opposed to the number 2 position held by Facebook.

At its peak Myspace employed 1,600 employees, which was reduced to 1,000 after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009. By June 2011, further job cuts reduced its size to 400 employees, with Myspace to lay off at least 150 employees and put another 150 employees on a transition plan in which they can still work for pay temporarily while looking for another job.

As a subsidiary from July 2005 to June 2011, Myspace does not disclose revenues or profits separately from its parent News Corporation. On June 29, 2011, Myspace was sold to Specific Media for US$35 million plus a 5 percent stake in Specific Media. Pop star Justin Timberlake also took a small stake in the deal.

History

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, implemented using ColdFusion. 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 was not distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting 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. 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, 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. thumb|alt=old logo|Original logo The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc. 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, 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, 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. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping Myspace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.

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). Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of Myspace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.

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 also 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.

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.

On November 1, 2007, Myspace and Bebo joined the Google-led OpenSocial alliance, 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 however remained independent. Google had been unsuccessful in building its own social networking site (Orkut 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! in 2007, Myspace was valued at $12 billion.

Decline

On April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook Myspace in the Alexa rankings. Since then, Myspace has been in 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 rival Facebook focused on creating a robust 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, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research noted of social networking websites that Myspace and other social networks 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 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 sophisticated 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" from American cities such as Detroit; 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 passes 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).

Restructuring and sale

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, 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. 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 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.

Re-design

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, 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, 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 November 2010, the company fully 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 Myspace staff would be reduced by 47%. Despite the new design, user adoption continued to decrease.

New image

On October 27, 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.

New logo design

A report in October 2010 at Techcrunch.com detailed Myspace's debut of a new logo. The "My" portion appears in a different font, while the part previously occupied by the word "Space" was replaced by a simple underline mark, representing a blank "space". This logo has been implanted on Myspace's website since November 11.

Revenue model

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 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, 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 up together.

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. 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 "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. A photo editor powered by Fotoflexer 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. 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.

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 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 (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me", "I'd Like to Meet", and "Interests". Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via Myspace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on Myspace.

A user can also change the general appearance of his or her page by entering CSS (in a <style> ... </style> element) into one of these fields to override the page's default style sheet using Myspace editors. This is often used to tweak fonts and colors. 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.

Music

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, 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, 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 and Sean Kingston 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, 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 and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster. 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.

Myspace features

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. 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, 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. MySpaceIM was added as an default feature of Myspace by the end of 2009.

In early 2007, Myspace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing 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 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 and Rogers Wireless.

In April 2007, Myspace launched a news service called Myspace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.

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.

Politics

During the 2008 presidential election in the United States, candidates set up Myspace profiles, presumably in an effort to attract younger voters. Most profiles feature photos, blogs, videos, and ways for viewers to get involved with campaigning. Myspace features these politicians' profiles on its front page in the "Cool New People" section, on what appears to be a random rotation.

Many political organizations have created Myspace accounts to keep in touch with and expand their membership base. These range from larger organizations like the John Birch Society and the ACLU to smaller locally focused environmentalist groups and Food Not Bombs activists.

Criticism

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. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers. 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, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed Myspace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and 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 cited this as its main reason for naming Myspace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.

In addition, new features have been gradually added (see featuritis).

Security

In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by "Samy" to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC 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 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/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZw==http (The new links are determined by Base64 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.) The Sydney Morning Herald's 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.

Child safety

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. 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 persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying 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 in Texas dismissed a case when a family sued MySpace for negligence, fraud, and misrepresentation; a girl in the family had been sexually assaulted 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 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.

Social and cultural

Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy 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, 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 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 and other board members cheated shareholders by selling the company for less than it was actually worth. Valleywag, a gossip blog that reported on the allegations, also claimed that founder and public face of MySpace, Tom Anderson, was a public relations 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.

Censorship

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, a move necessary to improve site security.

Stalking

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, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, 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 discrimination

On January 30, 2008, Bryan J. Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor, and moderator of the Atheist and Agnostic Group, accused Myspace of pandering to religious intolerance by deleting atheist users, groups and content. Specifically, Pesta alleges that Myspace deleted AAG's account, and his own personal profile, based on complaints from people offended by atheism, and this was the second time Myspace deleted the group since November 2007, even though, according to Pesta, it had never violated the site's Terms of Service.

International sites

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 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, IIS 6.0, ASP.NET and .Net Framework 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.

As of 2009, Myspace has started migrating from HDD to SSD 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 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."

Blocking

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 in Sparta Township, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on Myspace or similar websites (such as Gaia) 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, 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.

Legal issues

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 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 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

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, 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, whether it’s Photobucket 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."

See also

List of Internet phenomena

List of virtual communities with more than 100 million users

List of social networking websites

MyDeathSpace.com

Social software

SodaHead.com

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

gOS 2.9 "Space" - Linux distribution geared toward Myspace users, see gOS (operating system)

References

Further reading

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, 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 and Anthony D. Williams. 2007. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Penguin.

External links

* Category:Blog hosting services Category:Community websites Category:Companies based in Beverly Hills, California Category:Global internet community Category:Internet advertising and promotion Category:Internet properties established in 2003 Category:IOS software Category:News Corporation subsidiaries Category:Social information processing Category:Social networking services Category:Virtual communities Category:Web 2.0

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