MySpace Freaksby: Amanda and Cierra

Why MySpace?

Teens are constantly looking for places to hang out, away from parents and school. MySpace gives them just that – a place to socialize with others of similar interests and tastes. The biggest attraction in using MySpace is its ease of use and the number of friends one can meet online.

Setting up an account in MySpace is free and easy. The only requirements are that users must be at least 14 years of age. The information needed to start an account includes:

• Valid e-mail address• First and last name• Password for the account• Country• Zip code• Date of birth • Whether or not to make the date of birth public• Agree to Terms of Service and Privacy Policies

History of myspace

In California. Co-creator Tom Anderson told friends about it, held huge MySpace parties, e-mailed everyone and made it happen. MySpace began to make money by selling ad banners strategically placed atop every page. These ads are seen by 27 million registered MySpace users. The majority of the users are 17 to 35 years old, the most highly sought-after demographic for advertisers. This helps keep MySpace free.MySpace allows you to easily enjoy the technological thrills in which once only true “nerds” could delight. Basically it allows you to build your own multi-media enabled interactive Web page without needing to know even a single line of coding

Facts

MySpace Facts:   

MySpace is totally going crazy. MySpace now attracts more page

views than both Hotmail and Google. MySpace is growing by more than

75,000 members a day. MySpace has gone from 0 to 27 million

members in a just over two years.

MySpace Book for Dummies

Some new MySpacer’s might find this book useful.

It shows you how to:› Set your account settings› Accept friend requests› Search Contact friends› Block users› Message and Hyperlink› And much much more.

The Dangers of MySpace

While MySpace is great for making new friends and promoting oneself, there are several drawbacks in allowing your children to roam freely online within the MySpace framework.

First and foremost, MySpace profiles are public. Anything posted on a public profile can be read by other members, and anybody in the outside world can get to a MySpace profile. Children often disclose too much personal information (i.e. – name and addresses, school names, classmates, teachers, birthdates, favorite hobbies) on profiles, which attract child predators lurking on the site. These predators seize upon details left in blogs, comments, and personal profiles to take advantage of these kids when parents aren’t home, or when kids are at school.

Secondly, teens love to gossip. The same problems that torment kids at school are magnified tenfold on MySpace. Gossip, malicious rumors, bullying and racial slurs are posted on a public forum to an audience of millions. This can seriously lead to problems in the future where there is a possibility that a college denies admission or an employer looks elsewhere in recruitment. Saying anything now can hurt later on.

Dana Burns

“When my daughter 1st got MySpace I didn’t even know anything about it. Jess was talking to older men and telling them personal information. I had a talk with her about this and eventually blocked MySpace from our home computers. Its to dangerous for young teens to play on. They need to find more resourceful things to do with their time.”

MySpace Overcome By Severe Phishing 'Epidemic'

The viral scam, which targets the site's younger users, promises victims a free $500 Macy's gift card.

It sounds like a steal. And actually, it is. It's the stealing of a member's identity.

The spam scam involves users unknowingly sending their MySpace friends e-mails and posting comments on their profiles that plug a ploy for the supposedly free gift card that they'll never actually see, touch, or spend.

In fact, to lead the younger members on, the ads are written in "kids-speak." One such posting starts off by telling the victim, "Hey dude, check it out! You ain't gunna believe this!"

Another one reads: "i'm just hittin you up, as a friend, to fill you in on this exclusive deal to get a FREE $500 Macy's Gift Card, yes, FREE! just answer a question or two and BOOM you got a shopping spree lol!"

There's no way to tell for sure just how many users have been victimized, but the number is likely to be well into the thousands by now. Just browsing through various members' profiles, it doesn't take long to happen upon one that advertises the gift card scam.

Hackers on MySpace

Users of the popular MySpace website have been warned by computer experts that viruses linked to the interactive site, which boasts more than one million regular users, are in circulation.

Experts believe that hackers have hit the hugely popular site and say the viruses in circulation can change settings, delete files, secretly track users' movements online and even damage computers.

They believe that the hackers have hidden dangerous software on the site which means that computers can be attacked unaware to users while they are just viewing pages.

Google and MySpace working together

Six Fun Facts from Google Landing the MySpace Search and Ad Deal

August 7th, 2006 Google has agreed to pay Fox 900 million dollars over the next three years for

exclusivity to provide the search and text ads on all Fox properties, most notably MySpace.

What does this all mean? 1. A lot more revenue for MySpace, which hasn’t really been blowing people away

with it’s revenue numbers thus far for how many users and how much traffic they get.

2. Google cements itself as the search engine of choice for the MySpace generation, as if they weren’t already.

3. Adwords advertisers just got a lot more volume opportunities on Adsense to get clicks from cool kids who just want to say “Thanks for the add, TTYL, LOL!”

4. Google has spent almost 2 billion dollars to secure search and ad space on MySpace and AOL in the last year.

5. Google is locking Yahoo and MSN out of a lot of search queries and ad inventory. 6. The deal price is significantly more than MySpace was even purchased for at

$580 million!

MySpace Celebrities

Jeffree Star (born November 15, 1986 as Jeffrey Steininger) is an American model, fashion designer, make-up artist and singer-songwriter residing in the Los Angeles area. He is known for his popularity on MySpace from his gender-bending appearance. He dubs himself "Queen of the Internet"

Chris crocker Chris Crocker (born December

1987) is an openly gay] Tennessee-based] YouTube and MySpace personality and self-described entertainer who produces and acts in transgressive videos. According to Crocker, safety concerns over death threats he has received have forced him to keep his identity and exact location private. Crocker is his stage name. As of October 2007, Crocker's videos have received a combined 40.2 million plays on MySpace, and his blog channel on YouTube is the 14th most viewed of all time in all categories, with over 48.7 million views.

Works cited

http://www.techipedia.com/2006/college-statistics-2006-myspace-facebook-youtube-google/

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/myspace_1 http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/96/047

00952/0470095296.pdf http://www.conversionrater.com/index.php/2006/08/

07/six-fun-facts-from-google-landing-the-myspace-search-and-ad-deal/

http://www.wirenh.com/Features/Cover_Stories/MySpace_in_YourTown_20050928768.html

http://wcbstv.com/technology/macys.myspace.phishing.2.564526.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crocker_(Internet_

celebrity)

Dana Burns –Interview MySpace for Dummies