Myspace.com

a place for a generation

Lady Venom says she’s picky about the guys she dates – they must have a face picture.

Her own all-black Web page begins with a smiling, half-nude headshot of Lady Venom herself. While a hand-picked Atreyu song plays in the background, neon green and pink font describe everything from her general hobbies (criminology and extreme sports), to whom she’d like to meet (“someone who isn’t a total prick!”).
Like many of her generation this 19-year-old Fort Collins resident, also known as Katie Kleinbeck, has signed on to one of the fastest growing trends since iPods: Myspace.com.

However, while Lady Venom is looking for love in cyberspace, others see a dark side to this new way of communication: online predators, lost job opportunities and a pure waste of time rank among the most popular complaints.
           
Much like MTV defined a generation in the 80s, Myspace is having similar effects on today’s youth.

“I sign on every chance I get,” said Kleinbeck. “I’m addicted!”

In the spirit of the new millennium, the site goes beyond the single dimension of a television screen and harnesses the interactive world of the internet as it provides a free forum for young people to express themselves, stay connected with friends and meet new ones, and access a what’s hot/what’s not list of pop culture.

Myspace has also allowed its audience to create their own agenda with little regulation. This new style of programming leaves users able to post any information about themselves they want, which in turn is open for anyone from online predators to the future employers to read.

So far nearly 98 million users have created individual sites that they can personalize through their choice of colors, pictures and music.  Created in January 2004 by entrepreneurs Chris DeWolfe, 40, and Tom Anderson, 30, the site even caught the eye of Rupert Murdoch, who purchased Myspace for $580 million last year.

Today the site has surpassed internet giants like eBay, Yahoo! and Google in the number of pages viewed to become the most visited Web page in the United States in July, according to online intelligence service Hitwise. But even with the site crossing into the big leagues of the internet, its users seem to stick to the simple Myspace motto: a place for friends. Meeting new friends and keeping in touch with old ones is, for most people, what Myspace is all about.

“With Myspace I get to talk to friends from across the country,” said Quinn Kick, a 23-year-old Fort Collins resident who grew up on the East Coast. “I get to check in with old friends, drop them a message and see their pictures.”
Chris Dunsmoor, a 20-year-old former CSU student, uses the site to get to know other like-minded users.
“I get a wide range of networking and friends out of Myspace,” Dunsmoor said. “It gives an opportunity to meet many people with similar interests and connect with a base of people.”

Each Myspace user’s profile features a personal “friends” list which provides a picture and link to each of that member’s online contacts. These friends can be anyone who has an account with Myspace, from a band-mate in high school to a person with similar music interests living 500 miles away.

“My friends list is a list of contacts to me, much like numbers in a cell phone,” Dunsmoor said.
Katie Kleinbeck (aka Lady Venom) brags about her list of over 600 Myspace friends, some of whom she knows personally, while other she met through the site. So far, Kleinbeck, who uses Myspace as dating tool, has met over 100 online friends in person.

“I start by sending them a message like ‘Hey, you’re cute! We should hang out.’ Some respond. Some don’t. It’s hit or miss,” she said. While none of the online-conjured dates have amounted to any long-term relationship, Kleinbeck said she’s still happy to meet new people and make friends.

However, while users like Kleinbeck praise Myspace for changing their lives, other young people aren’t quite as enthusiastic.

“[Myspace] is just a game of who knows the most people and can get the most friends,” said Erica Dobek, a 22-year-old CSU graduate. She is part of a shrinking minority of college students who haven’t joined any online communities.

 She said that while the site is beneficial to college students in terms of networking and keeping in touch with old friends, the open information puts a damper on any positive aspects the site could provide.

“I know people who just look up other people they hate,” said Dobek: “[Myspace] becomes all about ‘oh, look at her’ and ‘she’s going out with him?’ It just makes people bitter.”

Jenna Kirchgasler, a 22-year-old business major, agreed that Myspace can be more of a place for “spying” than a place for friends.

“It’s given everyone a way to check up on everyone else,” she said: “It’s kind of like the reality TV craze. I guess people like looking at other people.”

Steve Ross, a psychologist at Colorado State, says there are a number of reasons young people are flocking to online communities like Myspace.

“It’s a 15-minutes-of-fame kind of thing,” Ross said. He believed the easy-to-build personal sites act as a way for people to establish their identity.

Rosa Martey, a professor at CSU and an online communication specialist, agreed that Myspace can work as a form of self-expression.

“One of the great things about the internet is that you can experiment with who you are,” Martey said. “People have different identities in all aspects of life – online identities are just one.”

She gave the example of a shy person using an online persona to see what it’s like to be outgoing, in which, she said, there shouldn’t be a problem. However, if a married person claims to be single, the idea of establishing an identity turns into lying and deception. “The line is hard to define,” she said.

For most, however, online personas run parallel to offline personalities, according to Sally McMillan and Margaret Morrison in their article “Coming of Age with the Internet.”

In a qualitative study of 72 college students and their relationship with the internet, the research found that most users described the internet as a place to help them solidify their offline identities, rather than create new ones.
“[Research] suggested that online identities are not substantially different from those developed offline,” it said.
Along with an opportunity for self-expression, a change in communication patterns is also a major factor contributing to the site’s popularity.

“People want instant communication,” Ross said. “E-mails, even voice mails, are too slow.”

 “I don’t think it’s changed the way people interact as much as it’s given a new dimension of interaction,” Martey said. “Instead of an address book full of friends and a mailbox full of letters, [users] have some sort of evidence of friendship on a new space.”

However, with new ways of communication come new problems. Identity theft is a major concern that has blossomed through sites like Myspace as vital information is often revealed in blogs and comments without much thought.

“Many users are not completely aware of how public those pages are,” Martey said. When people participate in an online community it’s easy for them to feel like they know whose watching and reading, and they forget that they’re on public display,” she said. 

 However, many users may also face a second, less-apparent online issue as their own postings, pictures and personas could work against them.

According to Brian O’Bruba of the CSU Career Counseling Center, employers are using sites like Myspace as an extra, often unexpected, reference during interviews. While checking Myspace specifically is still somewhat rare for employers, O’Bruba said Googling a name is very likely during a job interview process, which can lead straight to a person’s Myspace page.

“If you don’t want your parents to see your site, would you really want your employer to?” O’Bruba asked.

Although he hasn’t heard of any local cases of lost jobs due to this technique, O’Bruba believes it is a “very real concern” and always addresses the issue during job-search discussions with students. He tells students to Google their own name to see what it produces to avoid putting themselves in any sort of “unprofessional light,” including through a friend’s page or even a comment that someone else wrote.

Even inoffensive information like ethnicity and family status can affect an employer’s impression, as it’s data that wouldn’t usually be enclosed in an application.

“Employers don’t want to have certain information,” O’Bruba said. “They want to make as equal of a decision as possible and want to keep a fair and consistent job search.”

Despite the problems posed, many believe that some version of Myspace is here to stay.

“I think it will stick around, but will morph into different things,” said Martey. “People will always be interested in something like Myspace.”

Eighty-nine comments and 632 friends later, Lady Venom agrees. “Myspace has changed my life.”

Social Networking Sites Around the Globe

• Genes Reunited: This U.K. site is designed to locate lost relatives, trace ancestry and explore family history. All a user needs to get started is their imitate family name to begin building their family tree. www.genesreunited.co.uk
• Frühstückstreff: Designed for anyone who may be new in town, travels a lot or just wants to make new friends, this German-founded, multi-lingual site is the initiative behind breakfast clubs around the globe as a membership provides invitations to meet other local users in-person over a morning meal. www.beonit.com/fruehstueckstreff
• Rediff Connexions: Rediff Connexions is Myspace meets Monster as the site aims to “connect with real people, become friends and succeed in life.” Established and prominently used in India, its users can build contacts in their field, sell products and get advise on business decisions. www.connexions.rediff.com
• WAYN: Made for the wanderlusts out there, WAYN (standing for “Where Are You Now?”) is designed to unite travelers from all over the world. With users in over 220 countries, it’s easy to find a travel buddy, get travel advice and even meet friends in your future destinations. www.WAYN.com