MySpace.com Review

When it comes to online communities, no site has received more publicity (both positive and negative) recently than MySpace.com.  The intent of MySpace is to have an online community where people can meet other people, hook up with friends from the past, and write a daily blog that can be read by the world.  While a social site, it is also a tool to express ones self, and the freedoms afforded the user are just about limitless, giving people the ability to post nearly anything that might share a piece of their personality.

Setting up an account is pretty easy, and from there you are open to edit your main page to truly reflect everything that you "are".  This includes posting pictures of yourself or things you like, a description of what your interests are and where you are from, and of course a quick blurb about you as a person.  From there people choose different routes, with some beginning to use it as a daily blog to tell friends how their life is progressing, some use it to chat daily with new friends, and others use it as a way to keep in touch with people they have known in the past.

The latter was the main reason I really started using MySpace, as I quickly realized that I now had a web-site that could search out people that I went to high school, college, or knew from work quite easily.  With so many people setting up accounts, I found a ton of people I knew right away.  From there I was able to add them to a "friends list" that allowed me to send them online messages, post to their profile pages, and see how they are doing in their lives.  It quickly became fun to chat with people on the site, and I have met quite a few additional people that shared my interests, or had attended the same schools as I did. 

With millions of people on the site, there is of course some risk that you will come across a bad apple or two in the midst.  If you are worried about interacting with people like that, and don't want to deal with potential risks, you can just set your profile to "private", which only allows people of your choice to see information about you online.  This is a cool feature, because then you can avoid spams from people you don't really want to associate, and it gives you the added security of your information not being plastered all over the Internet.  For people under 18, this is a requirement if you give your honest age at the sign-up. 

I think that MySpace is really a site that will give you as much as you put into it.  It is a great place to keep in touch with people, and you don't even have to expend that much effort to do it.  You can be notified of the birthdays of your friends, send messages (basically e-mails) through the site, post back and forth, and share about anything important happening in your life.  It's free to use, you can express your personality and share things with the world, and you can do it all from the comfort of your home.  Becoming part of a community has never been easier, and if you have ever had a hard time keeping up with friends from college, this is a great place to have pseudo reunions almost every day!