MySpace.com Review

MySpace is an online community for people to interact and exchange ideas. It is also a playground for pedophiles and pervs so you must be careful if you join. Know what you're getting into and you will have a lighthearted, fun experience. If you have kids, carefully monitor them, even if it means blocking the site from them or having their password to be sure no one is up to anything unsavory. Online safety should come before anything else on any community but especially such a high profile one as MySpace.

I was watching a special American Idol show tonight and saw Tom from MySpace introduced. Wow, he is a real celeb now! Tom started the little community which turned into a multimillion dollar one and, recently sold the site to a group of entrepreneurs. He still oversees and runs the site and Tom will always be equated with MySpace. He's even your first friend when you sign up!

I wondered how many people knew what MySpace was. Then I realized MySpace is almost universally known. If you have net access, you know at least something about the site, www.myspace.com.

For those who don't quite know the ins and outs of the site, I will give you an overview.

MySpace started out as a cool place for teens to gather and swap ... uh ... pictures, thoughts, and I don't even want to know what else.

As time went on, everyone from bands to celebs to us old folks had a MySpace page. Now, it's a bona fide networking site with a seedy underbelly.

MySpace is a free online community. People sign up and make a profile page with their photo, their "user name" and a bio of themselves. The site now allows you to upload up to 300 photos in folders. That's insane but it's there for you if you want it. Who even has 300 pictures to share?

Nonetheless, along with the ability to share photos with the world (no nudity or porn is allowed but I have seen some pretty racy pics floating around!), you can write about your life, rant, rave, and have your say in your blog area. You can choose if you want the world to be able to see your blogs, just your MySpace "friends", preferred people you choose, or just yourself.

Next, there is MySpace email. You write to your buddies, they write to you.

Let's not forget the handy comments feature. You can publicly comment to your friends. Usually this includes a glittery picture or just a hello. It is a sort of public shout out for no real reason other to let your pals know you are thinking of them.

If you want to tell ALL your friends something, you can send out a bulletin. Everyone on your friends list will have access to it and may or may not see it. Bulletins are usually quizzes, cries for attention, or announcements that really don't need to be sent to everyone on a friends list.

To add a friend, you request them to be your pal. If they accept, they show up on your "friends page". If they deny you, they don't. People will send you friends requests as well. You have the option of accepting them as friends or not. Your call. It all depends on why you are on MySpace.

Recently, there has been a small clamp down on kids accessing the site. You need to SAY you are over 13 to have a page. No proof of age is required.

After a number of pedophile cases and adults posing as kids and kids posing as adults, MySpace put a few security measures into place but, honestly, if an adult wants contact with a kid, he or she can get it. It's not hard to fake an identity.

In fact, half the celebrities you see on MySpace are just lonely people who idolize the celeb and pretend to be them. More and more real celebrities are getting MySpace profiles and proving it by holding up a sign saying that they are the real celeb with their MySpace URL. (Those are called "salutes" and are intended to weed out the fakes.) That does help to weed out the fakes but there are still zillions of them on the site and many unsuspecting "fans" writing to these so called celebrities.

MySpace has music and videos for your page and you can pretty it up with lots of graphics, photos, games, quizzes, backgrounds, and other stuff.

The site attempts to stop spam and other bothersome mail and profiles and has been doing a better job lately but you will never be immune to bothersome spam and get rich quick schemes that plague not just MySpace, but the internet in general.

There are many groups on MySpace that a member can join. Pretty much any interest has a group or groups affiliated with it. Groups are just a bunch of people who share a common interest and gather to talk about it.

To make online friends

To keep up with their favorite bands or celebrities

To network with others in the same profession or with similar hobbies

To find hot people to hook up with (I'm just sayin...)

To keep tabs on their kids who are on the site

To be part of a growing community

To pick up underage kids for Lord knows what

To stalk people

To fake being a celeb or well known person

To lure members to their racier websites or their sites selling something

And dozens of other reasons

Not really. Not if you are a child and your parent isn't standing behind you watching everything you do.

Not if you are vulnerable and looking for more than just chitchat. If you plan to meet people from MySpace in real life, it's a crapshoot whether you will be meeting whom you think you'll be meeting.

Viruses are popping up, messing with profile pages, exposing private emails, and sending emails supposedly from you to your friends. While I haven't heard of a virus that hurts your computer yet, your rep could be bruised by these annoying worms.

Stalking is so easy that it's almost a given that eventually you will be stalked, at least to a small degree, during your tenure on MySpace.

It's pop culture. It's networking. It's being part of the gang and enjoying the GOOD things the site has to offer. Friendships have been made at MySpace that transcended the site and even long-term relationships have come from a MySpace meeting.

My sons are on there and, while I am not worried about my 21 year old, I am very worried about my 16 year old. I have taken every measure to be sure he is safe, he doesn't reveal any info about himself that could lead someone to him, and to keep most details about himself private. I have his password and I check in to be sure all he is doing is chatting with his school friends and there are no suspicious adults hanging around. Personally, I think MySpace is dredge for kids and none should be on there.

If you ask any teen, they will tell you that YOU shouldn't be on there and that older people have taken over THEIR space. It's true, we have. And I can't say that we necessarily made it any safer.

Despite all this, I have a MySpace profile. I use mine to network, to keep in touch with the UFC and MMA fighters I follow, the wrestlers I enjoy, and people who write fiction and non-fiction as I do. I have some "friends" as well but most I know from other areas besides the site. I would not trust ANYONE I met solely on MySpace with sensitive or revealing information no matter how nice and trustworthy they may seem. It's the only way to protect myself from unwanted trouble.

I think people should join MySpace with the knowledge that it is just an online pop culture type community. It can be fun meeting people from all over the world and exchanging ideas and it can be neat to network with others who have the same profession or hobbies as you.

But I do caution everyone who signs up to remember that, for every decent, trustworthy person on MySpace, there are a dozen fakes, frauds, train wrecks, breakdowns waiting to happen, and potential trouble makers.

Enjoy the site but don't believe everything people tell you and always verify who you are talking to when you come across an athlete, celebrity, or musician.

And never, for any reason, give out your address or other revealing info. Adult or teen, you need to protect your safety and MySpace is home to millions of people, some of whom are of the deluded variety.

If you go into the experience knowing all of this, you could have lighthearted fun and even find old friends and network with people like yourself. MySpacers aren't all crazy pervs. But at times, it sure seems that way.

Block the bad and have fun with the good people.

Enjoy!

4 stars. Error messages and quirks on the site can drive you crazy. Otherwise, this is the most popular community on the net that I know of.

www.myspace.com