Myspace.com Site [UPDATED]
In a message to MySpace users, the company co-founder and president Tom Anderson said MySpace "has been screwy" since Saturday because of failures in both the main power supply and the backup generators. Visitors to the site were given an opportunity to play Pac-Man while waiting for the restoration of their personal profile pages.
myspace.com site
According to Netcraft , a British company that monitors website performance, MySpace was completely offline for about 90 minutes on Sunday. The rest of the time, profiles were inaccessible as MySpace had a temporary page with the Pac-Man game and an outage announcement.
Driven largely by word of mouth, MySpace has rapidly risen to become the second-busiest site in the United States, behind Yahoo, according to comScore Media Metrix. MySpace's 96 million registered users can expand their circles of friends through profile pages, photo sharing and other tools provided by the free, ad-supported site.
Parents need to know that this new version of Myspace is even more focused on music than the "classic" version. Think Pinterest meets Spotify -- social networking elements still exist, but the emphasis is on connecting with artists or content you like, not accumulating friends. Compared to the classic Myspace, user content is clean -- racy photos are few and far between. However, there are many different artists and genres represented on the site, so teens can find music with sexual or violent content if they're looking for it. Under the CCPA law you have the right to protect your personal information. Make a Do Not Sell request to Myspace.
The new version of MYSPACE preserves some of the social networking features of the original, but amps up its focus on music. You can find friends on Myspace, but you're also encouraged to discover new artists and other users who share your musical taste. Create a profile and begin "connecting" with musicians, fans, or an album or song. Connecting is like following someone on Twitter or Google+; you can follow someone, have that person follow you, or both. You can also create mixes and share content with your "collaborators," as the site refers to them. Users can synch their Myspace profiles to Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The new version of Myspace creates a very different experience from the original. The design is sleek, with horizontal scrolling and an aesthetic that's more reminiscent of an ad agency than a social networking site. Musicians and other artists who want to showcase their creations can build a sophisticated portfolio; fans can use "connections" to curate a profile that shows off their taste and leads them to other like-minded users. The navigation can be confusing -- it's not very intuitive -- but the site offers a virtual tour and guides to using new features. (You might have to read them more than once.) The music player is excellent.
The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
Conclusions: Adolescents frequently display risk behavior information on public Web sites. Further study is warranted to explore the validity of such information and the potential for using social networking Web sites for health promotion.
They, furthermore, received a generous bonus payment to keep them motivated to stay on and continue building the platform. By July of the next year (2006), Myspace had surpassed Google and Yahoo as the most-visited website in the United States. 60 of the 90 million users were U.S.-based.
The launch of Myspace Music was supposed to user in a new era of collaboration among internet platforms and established media companies (who, for instance, had sued startups like Napster into oblivion), but ended up becoming a side note at best. Myspace Music was extremely buggy and, above all, almost impossible to find on the website.
This paper examines the characteristics of online social networks. The researcher collected the data used in the study between January 3, 2007 and January 10, 2007. 150 networks were collected from MySpace.com, an online social networking site, along with six features from the profiles of those in the networks--race/ethnicity, education, religion, reasons for joining, profile background, and music. Two regression models were used to determine the effects of homophily on network density and network embeddedness. The regression models show that homophily for race/ethnicity, religion, music, and reasons for joining did not significantly affect network embeddedness or network density. Background and education homophily were the only significant variables in the models. These results support current research that suggests individuals are becoming friends online for very different reasons than in face-to-face contexts.
So it was a shock when, without warning (even Yahoo! (no fan of history) gives warnings when they shut down their websites), MySpace decided to modernize their website and destroy those blogs along the way. MySpace is all about the new now: launching with a new cool, funky commercial by a cult photographer; focusing on streaming music and mobile applications; and blanketing television networks who have young audiences, from Comedy Central to MTV to ESPN.
It was one of a half-dozen documented cases this past year alone in which older men used such Internet sites to set up sexual encounters with minor girls in Connecticut. There are dozens of similar stories in every state in the Union, as well as frustration in law enforcement that the federal government isn't doing more to stop it.
As a result, Connecticut has become the first state in the nation to introduce legislation that would require MySpace, other social networking sites, and chat rooms to verify the ages of their users. Any postings by those under 18 would require parental permission. Failure to comply would result in a fine to the Internet company of $5,000 per incident.
While sites like MySpace and Friendster are designed to let users share ideas with friends and make new friends, critics say it's also a way for potential criminals to make contact. But MySpace, with more than 100 million users worldwide, insists it's committed to protecting teens online. And it has set up an array of tools to help, including blocking software.
However, MySpace is opposed to the Connecticut bill, saying it is "well intentioned" but "not the answer." In a statement, MySpace's chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said, "The most effective means to protect teens online is through a combined approach involving features and tools to make our site safer, educating our users and their parents, and working collaboratively with online safety organizations."
Still, in response to previous criticism and federal legislation, MySpace has started working with groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to verify users' names against lists of convicted sex offenders. It also has limited the site to people 14 and older and set up a special restricted section for 14- and 15-year-olds.
The Connecticut bill would require networking sites to verify that a user either is 18 or older or has parental permission to have a profile. Dozens of Internet companies already provide age-verification tools. So this is how it would work: When a person provides information to a networking site, such as name, date of birth, or address, the site would put that information through verification sites, which would cross-check it against public records like driver's licenses, voter-registration information, land records, and local tax records. This process is already used for such things as online sales of alcohol and cigarettes.
When we teach, we construct spaces of our own. Whether in physical classrooms, in how we configure and conduct exchanges, in our online classes, in the ways we organize and make those spaces feminist, or in our interpersonal communication with students, we create spaces that foster learning, critical thinking, compassion, and serious inquiry. To create and maintain spaces of radical education and transformation, we must go beyond simple transmission of information and teach students to challenge, transgress, and even subvert "knowledge" and to understand that they are not only consumers but also producers of culture, media, information, and technology. Recognizing the central role of popular culture and media in our students' lives should inspire pedagogies that exploit current trends in student culture(s), encouraging students to become active participants rather than passive recipients. Assignments that ask students to engage in cultural production within (and outside of) their own spaces can function as powerful forms of political activism while meeting course goals and learning objectives. One effective strategy connects activist or Service Learning assignments to social networking sites, such as MySpace (www.myspace.com).
As an activist and teacher, I always look for opportunities to turn the most popular places into active, political spaces and MySpace is one of the most well-known and probably even overused web sites today. MySpace, like other thriving online social networks, allows users to construct profiles, communicate with others, share photos and videos, post public comments, create groups where users with common interests gather, post, and read blogs, and invite others to join "friend" lists. Social networking online is not a new phenomenon, but the explosion of activity on MySpace marks an unprecedented convergence of the social and technological, as young (and older) individuals rely on these networks to accomplish tasks from basic communication to planning parties to organizing coalitions around political concerns in record numbers. Statistics vary, but in April 2007, MySpace hosted 185 million registered users and was the number one most viewed site on the internet, attesting to the significance of online social sites in our students' lives (Elkin). 041b061a72