What is Myspace?
MySpace is a social networking website based in New York City offering an interactive network of blogs, user profiles, groups, photos, and an internal e-mail system. As of May 2006 it is the world's fourth most popular English-language website and the fifth most popular in the world, with over 82 million registered accounts. MySpace has outstripped competitors such as Bebo, Friendster, MyYearbook, Classmates.com and LiveJournal to become the most popular English-language social networking website. It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary teenage culture. |
MySpace Profile Content
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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 four, eight, twelve, or sixteen friends, or the "Top 4/8/12/16" (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. Comments, once posted, may then be deleted by the host of that MySpace profile or the person who posted the comment for further editing.
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, 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. These bots have proven to be effective, yet annoying for many users. These bots are provided by several companies, including iWalton, FriendAdder, and MySpaceMob. |
Customizing Myspace
Although there are hundreds of sites out there that offer different backgrounds and layouts for your myspace profile page, the installation is pretty much standard. You need to log-in to your account and find the "edit-profile" link. This is usually located on the top-left portion of the page...next to your image. The next step is to locate the "interests & personality" link. This link should be the very first option in the profile edit page. Finally locate the "About Me" edit box and insert the code. Note: In order to insert the code, you can copy and paste. Below are some examples taken from spaceaddons. |
Cursor
Simply copy & paste the codes into the 'about me' section of your profile.
Hover over the code box for a preview of the cursor. (IE)
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Background
Simply copy & paste the codes into the 'about me' section of your profile.
Hover over the code box for a preview of the cursor. (IE)
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