A Place for Friends? (myspace.com)

Member Name: KMello

Product:	myspace.com
Date:	03/03/07 (504 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great way to meet and recconect with people

Disadvantages: Users can be taken advantage of by online sex offenders, identity thiefs, etc

Myspace is a networking website that was created in July of 2003 by Tom Anderson and other administrators, and exploded with buzz in the United States thereafter. It is the 6th most popular website in any language, and the 3rd most popular in the United States.

Intermix Media owned part of Myspace, that was until Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought it for $580 million in July of 2005. This company happens to be the parent company of various media enterprises such as Fox Broadcasting.

Now the UK is experiencing the Myspace frenzy as well, thanks to Fox who planned on getting in on the UK's music scene. Myspace also plans on invading China and other countries in the future.

So what exactly IS Myspace?

Well, as I said it is a networking website, which allows users to post blogs, bulletins and pictures. It is especially popular among teenagers and young adults. The point of it is so that the users can keep in contact with friends and family in this age of technology prevailing over other means of communication. Many also use this site as a sort of dating service, which has been the cause of a lot of controversy.

The site seems to be the target of online predators. Myspace provides easy access to information on its users which these sex offenders can use against them. In today’s society, many people willingly give out personal information all over the web by filling out survey bulletins, expressing themselves in blogs, or simply talking to people they don't know who somehow get the information they want from unsuspecting victims.

One such case is Katherine Lester, 16, who flew from the United States to the Middle East to pursue a 20 year old man. Luckily U.S. officials in Jordan located Lester and convinced her to return home.

Since this incident and a few others, Myspace has worked to make the site safer for its users. They still allow younger people to have an account, starting at the age of 14, but those who are 14 or 15 will automatically have a private profile so it will not be viewed by people unless the user accepts them as a friend. Those who are 16 and older can also set their account to private if they so choose.

However, some changes they recently made could further protect its younger users. People who are over the age of 18 can no longer friend users that are 15 or younger, unless they can provide the name and email address of that younger user.

The thing is, users can still misrepresent themselves by lying about their age, which is a common practice among sex offenders who use the internet to their advantage. AOL Instant Messenger is a great example of this. People can easily message someone saying they are younger than they are in reality. If the other person trusts them, they are then susceptible to becoming another victim.

The key here is parent involvement. Guardians of younger users must make it their priority to monitor what websites their children use, and what information they give out. If parents played a larger role, incidents wouldn’t occur as often. Like anything else, however, events such as Katherine Lester’s will still happen, no matter what website or other means of communication a child uses.

Other negative sides of Myspace include identity theft and computer infestations, but as with the situation stated above, one can avoid these dangers if they don’t disclose any unnecessary information.

With all that being said, Myspace does have many admirable qualities. In a time where people are getting lazier with contacting friends and family, Myspace is the hip way to do so. People can “Pimp their Myspace” with customized html expressing their interests, and therefore meeting a lot of new, interesting and (hopefully) honest people. Personally, I have reconnected with many people from my past whom I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to reconnect with, including my current boyfriend. I’m also able to keep in contact with cousins who live far away without the long distance charges. I’ve grown closer to a couple of younger cousins because of Myspace as well. They took a look at my page and realized that have a lot of the same interests that they do.

If Myspace is used responsibly, it can prove to be a positive place, rather than a negative one that the media makes it out to be. I don’t believe that anyone under the age of 18 should use it, however, because not many people that age realize the consequences of what they say on the site. Other than that, Myspace truly is “A place for friends”.

Summary: If used responsibly, Myspace can be a positive site to communicate with people.