How to Find People on MySpace

Searching for friends on MySpace is not the easiest thing in the world. There is more than one way to find a friend on MySpace, and they each have their own pros and cons. Below the intricacies of MySpace people searching are unraveled.

The first way to begin a people search on MySpace is the obvious "Search" link at the top of the page. When you click on this, it takes you to a screen with three form fields, "Find a Friend", "Classmate Finder", or "Affiliation for Networking". Notice that the "Find a Friend" form has three radio buttons: Name, Display Name, and Email. The default for this form is "Name", which means the name the person actually entered when setting up the account as their (supposedly) real name. This is different than the "Display Name", which is the name you see at the top of a person's page on MySpace near their headline. The display name (often not a name at all) is usually the one that people change most often, sometimes on a daily basis, so keep this in mind when searching with display name selected.

Now, for example, what if your friend's name is John? Typing "John" in the name field will give you one gazillion hits. The flexibility of the MySpace search tools is ridiculously hideous, but they do provide some filtering. After submitting "John" as the name search, the first page of the results also includes a few drop down menus that will allow filtering the results based on country and a user-specified mile radius from a particular postal code. You can also specify only showing profiles with photos and/or photos with no details (if you think you will just recognize the mug shot). However, allowing details is probably a better idea in helping you discern which weirdo pic is really your friend from college.

The third option for searching in "Find a Friend" is the email radio button. Type in the person's email address to try and find them this way. There are many people who sign up on MySpace and do not put in their real name for either "Name" or "Display Name" (probably the smarter ones).

The second form is for searching for people via school affiliation. This requires that you type something for the school name (just specifying a state and a blank school name will cause a pop-up message to prompt you for a school name anyway), but if all you can think of is the first word of the school, that's enough. MySpace will return a list of possible matching school names, then you click on the one that rings a bell. Hee, hee. After that, you get a lot of hits, so take advantage of the additional filtering provided. You can refine the people search by gender, age range, relationship status, graduation year, years attended, major/minor, clubs, greek affiliation, or department/course number. As usual, the checkbox for photo only is also available.

The third form under the search link is network affiliation. This allows you to look under broad fields of interest: dance, fashion, marketing, modeling, music, nightlife, photography, publishing, radio, technology, television, theatre, or any of the above. Refinement options include gender, age range, country/mileage radius within a zipcode, keyword, and subfields within the broader field of interest. You guessed it, the ever available checkbox for photos only exists as well.

Ok, so what if you do not know the person's email address and are not having any luck with name searching? This brings us to the other way to search, browsing. The "Browse" link at the top of the page brings you to two tabs, basic and advanced. Click on the advanced tab to find a whole slew of identifying markers to search on. You cannot search by name or email address here, but the other fields are many: gender, age range, relationship status, country/mileage radius from a zip code, ethnicity, body type, height, smoking and drinking preferences, sexual orientation, education completed, religious preference, income, and children. Additionally, these results can be sorted by recently updated profile, last login, new to MySpace, or distance. Again, you can filter by profiles with photos only and/or photos with no details.

Keep in mind to not be too specific when you first search. Some people do not fill in all these details in their profiles. Just because you know John smokes, drinks, doesn't want kids, and is four feet tall does not mean he updated his profile that way. Back off and start with a more general search, and then update with one specific at a time. If one specific criterion does not work, try a different one. Some people who hold strong convictions about a certain element of their life may not have a problem using a fake name, but could never deny their non-smoking status, for example. Consider what you know about the person you are looking for, and what they feel strongly about as their identity. It is rare that a profile does not have some element of truth, even if they call themselves Vladimir the Destroyer, a non-smoking bisexual midget from Argentina. It may be true that Vladimir is bisexual, so sexual orientation is your magic bullet search criterion in this case.

So, if the search is still fruitless after all of these investigative tactics, consider who do you know that knows the person you are looking for? In our John example, if I can't find John, I think to myself, I remember that John's little brother Timmy is a hard core atheist and just moved near Nashville. So browsing for atheists within one hundred miles of Nashville may help me find Timmy which then may help me find John in a roundabout way. I find Timmy, browse through his friends list, and bingo, we see our friend John's smiling face, who now calls himself "Rambo the Squirrel Killer" living in Nigeria. Yeah, right. No wonder we did not find him right away!

A little patience and creative search strategies should help you in your quest for finding friends on MySpace. Happy friend searching!