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The MySpace Generation
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Dec 03, 2005 05:42 PM
from the when-did-they-become-the-@-generation dept.
from the when-did-they-become-the-@-generation dept.
theodp writes "They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing. BusinessWeek reports on The MySpace Generation, aka Generation @, for whom being online is a way of life. Preeminent among the virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, who boasts 40 million members and claimed the No. 15 spot on the entire U.S. Internet. And in When murder hits the blogosphere, MSNBC reports on MySpace's sometimes surreal role in popular news stories."
Related Stories
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MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users 251 comments
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'When News Corp. bought the social-networking Web site MySpace.com last July, the media company got two surprises, one good and one bad,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The good news: Traffic nearly doubled in the last half of last year. The bad news: MySpace is being criticized for exposing children to risqué content and sexual predators. In response, 'News Corp. plans to appoint a "safety czar" to oversee the site, launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information."
[+]
Viacom vs. News Corp. on Social Networking 65 comments
dolphinlover writes "The purchase of MySpace.com by Robert Murdoch's News Corporation last year for $580 million has caught the attention of another media conglomerate, Viacom Inc., whose CEO, Tom Freston, has now announced his intentions to purchase or partner with a social networking site this year in order to enhance the company's image with youth. Whether it will also be successful monetarily has yet to be seen, as MySpace.com only had $47 million in revenue in 2005 based on advertising. This news follows Viacom's acquisition of Neopets.com in 2005. For those companies already heavily involved in television and movies, expanding their presence to the Internet provides a new opportunity to gain a foothold over the competition."
[+]
Your Rights Online: Beware Your Online Presence 677 comments
Mz6 wrote to mention an article in the NY Daily News stating that an increasing number of employers are Googling their prospective employees during the interview/hiring process. From the article: "'A friend of mine posted a picture of me on My Space with my eyes half closed and a caption that suggests I've smoked something illegal,' says Kluttz. While the caption was a joke, Kluttz now wonders whether the past two employers she interviewed with thought it was so funny. Both expressed interest in hiring Kluttz, but at the 11th hour went with someone else."
[+]
Facebook On The Block 250 comments
conq writes "BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has turned down an offer for $750 million and is looking for 2 billion dollars. The article speculates that one possible suitor would be Viacom. From the article: 'A Facebook deal would help Viacom founder and Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone fend off a growing challenge from News Corp. The media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch has poured enormous resources into the Internet during the last year. It acquired social-networking pioneer MySpace.com last year for $580 million.'"
[+]
More Warnings Against Oversharing on MySpace 383 comments
Skapare writes "Your next prospective employer might be watching your MySpace page, according to a story at the New York Times. And if you think Facebook is more private, maybe not if that prospective employer has an intern from the same school checking up on you." From the article: "Students may not know when they have been passed up for an interview or a job offer because of something a recruiter saw on the Internet. But more than a dozen college career counselors said recruiters had been telling them since last fall about incidents in which students' online writing or photographs had raised serious questions about their judgment, eliminating them as job candidates."
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The MySpace Generation
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Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?larshansenphoto | Last Journal: Friday June 06 2003, @05:02PM)
Myspace is a festering heap.
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.sadistech.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 05 2006, @11:55AM)
Just think. You go to wal*mart and Mandy helps you. Wal*mart is in your local town. Search MySpace for Mandy in the town between 18/25 and you just might find her and all her friends. next time you see her working "hey, don't you know nick?"
you know her first name, her friends names, her interests, everything.
it's ammo for people who are bad at dating or potential stalkers, alike.
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)
MySpace is just the equivalent of AOL chat rooms. Those who aren't self-involved cliquish drama whores and dorks trolling for pussy from average girls with self-image problems over it are busy using Usenet and other more appropriate and useful places.
My police for MySpace content is the same as LiveJournal. Don't ask me to check out your page on either one - I'm not going to look at it. If you want to tell me something, you can tell me. You are not so precious and my time so worthless that I need to share in a mass-broadcast on what kind of cheese you had on your sandwhich today or how cute you think someone else's hair bow is. I just don't care. If I don't know you at all - I won't care. If I do know you well enough to care about the news, I'd prefer you take the time to have a CONVERSATION with me rather than slip me a URL and tell me to read up on your life like you're Jennifer fucking Anniston.
And I'm serious about this shit. Girlfriend, relative, coworker, love-interest. I don't care WHO you are. I won't check your page out.
Also - there's nothing dangerous about MySpace. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch after all and Bill O'Reilly wouldn't stand for anyone putting children at risk, would he?! Hell no - he'd crusade against you until the tide forced you over!
Seriously - I just don't get the MySpace thing. I think you have to be of a certain social accuity and lower intellectual level to find it worth your time. It has a terrible interface and is filled with crap. You may as well be using geocities for all it matters. Hopefully they'll just splinter off and form their own internet and take the tards with them.
And there's no point in people replying with "oh and you're so special?!" or "aren't you elite?!" or anything, because I don't care anymore than I care about MySpace. Maybe if I were into hooking up with twelve year old girls, I would be interested.
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Informative)
(http://localhost/)
That said, it should be respected as a form of writing and publishing. If a friend or love-interest of yours has published their writing somewhere and asked you to look at it by sending you a link, then it is simply rude and obnoxious to say, "no, I want you to go back, cut and paste it, and send it to me." I, for one, would tell you to take a running leap.
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone said "Hey, I wrote this great story" or "Hey, check out this review of the new movie I saw" - I would be interested. But I'm not going to read your block to find out "OMFG I'm so drink!!@!! I just got back from two partys and a consert! ROCK ON!!!!"
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
It's basically one giant rumor mill. There is no natural judicial system as you describe. The majority of messages i see posted on bulletins (the way to disseminate information to all your friends simply) are chain letters.
You mention your brother's band and how myspace is a huge non-corporate marketing aparatus. It's definitely the best thing around for indie bands, and it has definitely helped a lot of local bands i see at bars...but if you look at the featured artist on their front page, you'll only see ones that are ones signed to fox-owned labels. So, while it does have extreme potential for small-band marketing, it's also a huge corporate marketing force for shitty, overrated music. Before fox bought myspace, pretty much only independent bands were featured artists.
No, myspace is not your anarchist utopia. It's just another way to make business as usual hip for us mindless youngins. That said, i've "hooked up" with quite a few attractive ladies from myspace. So, it does have legitimate use.
Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: I have masturbated while looking at the images of attractive girls myspace users have uploaded.
Communication Tools versus Social Scenes (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.philosophistry.com/)
Communication tools, on the other hand, stick around. Look at AOL Instant Messenger. Crappy tool, but still the most popular. I even think facebook will survive this social networking service bubble. Facebook is also like a tool in that it functions as your school's better yearbook/directory.
Quality tools and services are long-term. Clubs and social scenes are ephemeral.
Yeah, what's the deal (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad I'm a part of a place like Slashdot that doesn't have any of that.
Losers (Score:5, Funny)
I hope our youth likes giving away it's rights (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.playfullyclever.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday December 04 2005, @04:58PM)
From the TOS: By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to MySpace.com, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com and that MySpace.com has the right to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
But they reserve the right... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.blitter.com/)
"Even after membership is terminated, this Agreement will remain in effect, including sections 4, 5, 7 and 9-14. MySpace.com's Terms of Use and/or subscription fees that were provided to you at registration may change from time to time. By using the Service and by becoming a Member, you acknowledge that MySpace.com reserves the right to charge for the Service and has the right to terminate a Member's Membership should Member breach this Agreement or fail to pay for the Service, as required by this Agreement."
So who says they won't "pull the trigger" and try to claim rights (even retroactively)?
Hmm... so what's to say they won't suddenly change Section 5 to say "exclusive, in perpetuity rights to all material, even after you leave My Space"? If your novel/mp3/scientific breakthrough is online when they make the change to the TOS, it'll already be too late.
I'm not saying they'd necessarily do this, but it's possible. Better to keep your stuff off of Fox's servers.
Re:I hope our youth likes giving away their rights (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://del.icio.us/jvz | Last Journal: Sunday December 03 2006, @12:45PM)
What Myspace shows (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://mboverload.no-ip.org/tech.html | Last Journal: Tuesday July 13 2004, @01:54PM)
If you were to surf myspace you would think every teenager on earth is a complete fucking moron. DON'T mod me troll. Look for yourself.
Backrounds, stupid text colors, backround music, animations, inability to use the english language, and much more. I don't think I can express in words how worried I am at the stupidity of the comming generation.
Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Funny)
Its just more visible (Score:4, Insightful)
When i was a teen, i also heard trashy music, also had cheesy jet-fighter posters in my room and wasnt known for my social skills. And the others in my class werent better, either.
The only thing thats different is that with the internet, occasionally older non-parent people stumble upon this stuff, which just didnt happen before the internet.
I am sure if you go offline to an event thats REALLY in in the 12-15 age group, you wouldnt find a much different picture. But you wouldnt go there, while online, its just a click away...
Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://weill.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 01 2005, @01:18PM)
* By which I mean "the group of elitists on the Internet who wish there were literacy and knowledge requirements to use the Internet," also known as "Usenet."
Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Interesting)
I actively choose not to be associated with MySpace. Why? Because it's about as low class as anything I could imagine. Call me an elitist yuppie, but I would never want to be caught with a profile on that site, until they manage to improve their image massively, i.e. get rid of the massive guido overload factor in their userbase.
Please reference the number of pics of dudes in sleeveless wifebeaters with muscle shots, tatties and gang slogans in their profile for evidence. So terribly classless.
At least Orkut had geek chic before it was overrun by the Brazilians.
Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.theschism.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday March 15 2007, @04:20AM)
I'm 31. When I moved across the country to an area where I knew NOBODY, MySpace helped me meet people with similar interests. MySpace is the only reason I have any friends at all down here (yes, I'm a piss-poor socializer outside of an ASCII environment). The one venue where I've found to play my music on a regular basis down here, I found out about through MySpace. I've gotten some fans for my (unsigned, independant) music through MySpace, as well as become a fan of other unsigned, independant local musicians. I don't have a huge fan base, but thanks to MySpace, if I ever visit Seattle, Canada, Charlotte, Chicago, Orlando, or Texas, there's people who can help me hook up shows. MySpace is how I find out when good local acts are playing (do YOU really wanna wade through ten pages of 5-point type in the back of your free weekly? Me neither). MySpace is the reason people come to see me when I play. If MySpace ever adds the ability to email multiple people without the use of bulletins, it might just replace email for me. All of my friends here, and all of my friends in Milwaukee, and all of my friends in San Francicso, are on it. I need to check my MySpace messages multiple times a day. I only need to check my actual email once every day or two.
MySpace isn't completely original - it's basically LiveJournal meets Demostreams. But the idea of a multi-featured user community has come a long way since AOL, and it's a concept that's rapidly gaining traction in the marketplace. Slashdot itself is a user-community, just without certain features (music and pictures) and with others (a more specific and exclusive user base). MySpace, Slashdot, Livejournal, Friendster, etc etc are as successful as they are because the marketplace rewards their ideas. Quit bitching about it, come up with a concept as successful as MySpace, and make your own billion dollars.
Are there problems with MySpace? Sure. The ads are getting more and more intrusive. But if that's your argument against it, you might as well argue against the internet itself. There is plenty of ugly HTML on MySpace. Last time I checked, though, there was also plenty outside of it as well. The servers are getting slower and buggier. But again, MySpace is not unique in this regard - I can't even log into Friendster anymore, it's so slow. And yes, there are a bunch of little kids running around acting like morons. But if this is your argument against it, then you must also be against all IM as well. And, just like Slashdot, there are plenty of people who are idiots - and plenty who aren't. Bottom line, MySpace is very much worth the ZERO DOLLARS I paid to be there.
If you don't want to use it, that's fine, but don't insult everybody on it without exception. That's just stupid and ignorant.
And they kill themselves online... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wuh? (Score:5, Funny)
Since when did the MySpace l4mers get op status?
Whose Generation? (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday May 24 2003, @05:12AM)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my space)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my space)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my space)
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my space)
And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my space)
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my space)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my space)
This is my space
This is my space, baby
I never got the fascination with (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to be treating all this stuff as new when much of it's been around for a good while. Next, they will be gushing about how people use newfangled email over snailmail. The only message here is that people tend to communicate with the best medium for them which is nothing new.
Not just MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.xanga.com/morrighu | Last Journal: Saturday August 26 2006, @09:16AM)
2 cents,
Queen B
Not My Space (Score:5, Interesting)
Fox purchased MySpace, and I wish it was someone else like Google. The site is a mess with all sorts of useability and performance problems. It would be nice if someone just setup a good new framework for it, and then "imported" everyone's crap into it. The current MySpace framework is like some student's school project grown out-of-control. Maybe it is.
So anyways, it's really 'Not My Space' for a lot of people. Just a place to waste time. I wouldn't expect it to become somemore more than that.
Re:Not My Space (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.triwizard.net/)
If you wrote such a system and offered it to myspace, they'd probably pay big bucks for it. But it would have to handle more traffic than even Slashdot does, do it well, and manage tens of terabytes of data without falling over. And that's just for the user profiles... Then you've got the groups, the music, the mail system,
I love listening to people who have never built a massive web site before saying how "someone should just do it right". When you build a system and it explodes 1000x faster than you could possibly predict, it's hard to keep up with. Even when you build it correctly and manage to anticipate your traffic loads, serving that number of complex pages is no laughing matter and causes a lot of people to work a LOT of long hours.
--S (yes, I've done this before.)
Its time to let go... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://myspace.com/adolfojp)
Today, at last, kids have a better freedom of the press than we did. They can give back to the system instead of just listening silently. And they have so many more channels to chose from, some made by their peers instead of by the big media corporations.
What they say will be childish, stupid and uninformed. Just like the things we used to say when we were their age. But at least they will have an outlet to do so.
I drink to the @ generation. And to the generation before, thank you for making this possible.
Cheers,
Adolfo
PS. Remember when using computers was social suicide?
Studies regarding such sites? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have any researchers who study education performed reviews of such sites? How do such children and teens perform in high school? Is their inability to write sensibly only exhibited online, or does it also creep into their school work?
God I hate myspace (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/sinistertim101 | Last Journal: Saturday March 24 2007, @12:32PM)
I try to filter as many friends requests as possible to those who are older 23+. But still I see comments like "OMG
I would leave if I could. I guess I need more real life friends closer to home and less online.
Reminds me of 2ch..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 19 2004, @10:03PM)
What about World of Warcraft and the burgeoning .. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.philosophistry.com/)
I don't think myspace deserves to be associated with a "generation" because myspace hasn't generated its own unique subculture. And it's not really a "generation" as a large portion of the traffic on myspace is by older men looking for skanks.
The WoW and gamer culture, on the other hand, has its own languages and inside jokes. Plus guilds are way more cohesive than these loose organizations or "networks."
I'm creating a social network just for gamers, and WoW players specifically right now: Leetster [leetster.com]. This is a link to my profile: pakhuda [leetster.com]
historical myopia (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://circletimessquare.com/)
depending on how old you are, should we judge you on your graffiti from the 1980s or what you carved in your desk in the 1960s?
are you serious? you have a poor, dim view of history
you see a frightening loosening of standards over time before you. it is a false perception, relax
you suffer from historical myopia
there is nothing new under the sun, only dumb teenagers being dumb teenagers, as they did in 4000 BC, as they will do in 4000 AD
Mirror Shots... (Score:3, Funny)
When did all the minds close around here? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~Infonaut/journal | Last Journal: Tuesday July 31, @02:22PM)
1) There are so many low-class/stupid/aesthetically-challenged/offensiv e-in-some-other-way people on MySpace and I can't stand that.
2) MySpace is mostly populated by teenagers, and this particular batch of teenagers is so much worse than teenagers from my generation.
3) MySpace is ripping off the people who use it, through TOS that allow MySpace to profit from content created by MySpace denizens.
4) The content on MySpace is total crap. There's nothing of value on MySpace. Ten thousand monkeys could create better content.
The "I can't stand the people on MySpace" response is similar to the bitching and moaning about blogging, which comes up on Slashdot constantly these days. On the one hand, Slashdotters are happy to carry the torch of freedom, demanding that Big Media should no longer control us, that TV should get hit with a clue stick, and so on. Yet when a community does spring up and people of all kinds, the unwashed digital masses, get on board, it freaks out a lot of Slashdotters. This is so reminiscent of the "if you don't know how to run UNIX, you shouldn't be doing things on the Internet" attitude so prevalent among alpha-geeks in the mid 1990s. The Internet shouldn't just be for geeks, any more than athletics should just be for jocks, or beaches should just be for beautiful people.
Not everyone on MySpace is a teenager. But people seem hungup on the large number of teens on MySpace. Teenagers are teenagers are teenagers are teenagers. My father's generation was the one that screwed up the Vietnam War and turned the whole nation upside down. When they started causing trouble in the early 60s, they were the scourge of America. They turned out ok. A bit self-righteous, but ok. ;-) My generation was described as a bunch of shiftless slackers when we were teens. We had no soul, no drive, no moral compass, and nothing to contribute to society. Somehow that opinion changed when we hit the workforce in big numbers and contributed to the boom in the Information Economy. The teenagers of today are obsessed with the superficial, spoiled, and unconnected to reality. I'm sure by the time they reach their 20s and 30s, they'll somehow magically be transformed into good citizens. Funny how that works, isn't it?
The using MySpace are just like any slice of a given population. Some of them have interesting things to say and some of them don't. Some of them are creative and others aren't too imaginative. Maybe the venue attracts one type of person more than another, but generalizing about content on MySpace, even if the generalization is correct, doesn't mean that there's nothing of value on MySpace.
As for the Terms of Service, MySpace users are making an exchange. They get to tap into a huge network of people and information without cost. In return, MySpace (Fox) can use content from MySpace if it wants to, for commercial gain. 99.9% of the content on MySpace, no matter how good, is not going to be used for commercial purposes by Fox, simply because there's so much of it. The content that is good enough (and that depends on how you define "good") to be used by Fox may in some way be exploited commercially. Do you really think that the creator of such content wouldn't be happy to have their content publicized by Fox?
Think back to when you were a bit younger, and imagine that something like MySpace existed at the time. You'd probably be pretty excited by it, perhaps because you hadn't yet become jaded to all things Internet, perhaps because you liked the idea of communicating with people outside of the narrow confines of the community you lived in.
MySpace isn't for me. It obviously isn't for a lot of Slashdot regulars. So what. Get off the high horse. Diversity is good. Peer to peer communication is good. Or should we just go back to the monoculture of NBC, CBS, and ABC?
Hunting Deer == Homicidal (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://studyinjapan.blogspot.com/)
Re:Generation Labels (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
It would be more honest too name generations by world/national economic/political gain/loss. For instance, there is the 'Lost Generation' (yes, I know it formally pertains too writers in the early 1900s, but it's been broadly applied), but what makes them the 'Lost Generation' could be applied too several generations that came before them, and perhaps too the current generation that seems too be holding the limelight. Things tend to follow cycles, and a lot of it just happens over and over again when the previous generation(s) have forgotten about what went on before. Fashion, for instance, comes full circle about every 27 years. Broad generational attitudes could come full circle every 100 years or more.