MySpace is a social networking Web site offering an interactive network of blogs, user profiles, groups, photos and an internal e-mail system. According to Alexa Internet, as of May 2006 it is the world's fourth most popular English-language website and the fifth most popular in the world. Note that this is based on exceptionally intense usage by a relatively limited number of visitors, many more than five English language sites have a higher "reach" measurement, that is they are visited by more different people each day. MySpace has outstripped competitors such as MSN Spaces, Friendster and LiveJournal to become the most popular English-language social networking website with higher traffic and just over eighty million registered accounts. It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary teenage culture, especially in the Anglosphere. MySpace has 250 employees and projects a 2006 revenue of US$20M.

History

Prior to the creation of the current social networking website the MySpace.com domain name was registered in 1998 to an online storage and file sharing firm.Online storage firm shutters file depot. Retrieved December 29, 2005.

Prior to that use, MySpace.com was home to a web design firm.

The current MySpace service was founded in July 2003 by Tom Anderson (an alumnus of both UC Berkeley and UCLA), the current president, Chris DeWolfe (a graduate of USC's Marshall School of Business), the current CEO, and a small team of programmers. It was partially owned by Intermix Media, which was bought in July 2005 for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises). In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene".

The creators of MySpace have hosted many parties in Hollywood, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Hawaii, and McAllen, Texas to support the site. The headquarters are in Los Angeles, but the parent company is headquartered in New York City.

MySpace is also home to various independent musicians, who post songs directly on their profile. These songs can also be uploaded onto other profiles. Because of the high popularity, mainstream musicians have entered this trend as well. CDs of independent music are sold in various establishments.

In February 2006, amateur filmmaker David Lehre released The MySpace Movie, a short film which quickly became an Internet phenomenon, registering over 6 million hits in the first three months following its release.

Also in this month, most of the BBC Radio 1 DJs set up profiles and mentioned them very frequently. This is somewhat controversial as the BBC usually avoids any mention of individual companies. In the United States, the influential Major Label Music Network, a MySpace group that networks major level recording artists (and indy or unsigned acts) with major level industry executives, companies and major level professionals, also includes highly influential U.S. commercial radio stations KROQ and WAAF, both of whom maintain profiles on MySpace, as do popular U.S. DJ's in the group.

Contents of a MySpace profile

Each profile contains two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" pages. Profiles also can contain sections about standard interests, such as music, television, books, and movies, as well as specific personal details, such as marital status, physical appearance, and income. Profiles also contain a blog. A part of customizing ones MySpace is uploading images onto their site. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. MySpace has also recently added the option to upload videos as well.

There is also a count of the friends the user has. A total of eight, twelve, or sixteen friends, or the "Top 8/12/16" (now simply called the "Top Friends"), are shown directly on the profile, with a link to a page which lists all of the user's friends. The "Top Friends" often becomes a touchy subject as it forces one to choose between friends, sometimes influenced by showing up on someone else's.

Below this is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments about the user for all viewers to read. Although comments are publicly accessible, many users leave personal comments anyway, allowing any reader to know their business. Many MySpace users will choose to moderate comments, meaning they must be approved in order to be viewed by the public.

MySpace profile layouts can have the entire look changed with many different editors available from other websites. For example; one can change their "Top Friends" to show any number of friends, or hide the feature. Using HTML and CSS, the colors, background and foreground images, table style, scroll bar style and color (Internet Explorer only, as this is not an official CSS property), could be changed to suit their preference. One can also add music to their profile either by visiting an artist's page and choosing a song from MySpace's music player, or using a customized music player or embedded media file.

There are many people who are making careers out of promotion on MySpace. From bands, to celebrities, to exotic car dealers, many people have found MySpace to be an invaluable tool for advocating their goods and services. There are automated tools known as bots to help aid in increasing ones reach on MySpace.