Making MySpace Your Space

The Internet social site MySpace has created quite a buzz in recent memory. It's been hailed as the premier place to see and be seen from all corners of cyberspace. While MySpace has generally been considered a site for the younger crowd (aged 12-24), more and more older folks are experimenting with the site. In 2006, comScore reported that forty percent of all MySpace users were between the ages of 35 and 54 - and rising each year. However, this aged presence isn't very visible on the site. Just by taking a quick glance at the sign-in page, visitors to the MySpace website will clearly see that it's marketed toward the young adult population. The music, ads, and videos presented on the site are generally not things the older crowd would be interested in. Further, once visitors start skimming profiles, they will find that the most prolific ones are typically the high school-friend-hoarder types who speak in 'text' (grossly abbreviating things instead of typing them out, such as GTG - got to go - for example) with nothing really of substance on their pages, aside from what's happening within their circle of fellow partiers this weekend. With the majority of this age group trying to be the proverbial 'big fish' in a small pond, the rest of us begin to feel like fish out of water.

For the older crowd exploring MySpace, finding people your own age that share your interests, views, and political and social beliefs can be a challenge. MySpace has a search function where you can search by interests, age, location, and any number of other criteria to find people you want to interact with. That's a great place to start and comes in real handy by cutting down the number of results and pages you have to sift through. After narrowing down your choices a bit by the aforementioned search feature, there are a few simple ways to narrow them down even further.

Notice the layout

The person's choice of theme and layout on their page will tell a lot about them. Most of us of a certain age are way beyond the flashy blog toys and glittery tags that say "HOTTIE" in bold pink font. Pages that take forever to load due to music we don't like or understand, signatures that would make a light sensitive person seize, and tiny, neon font that hurts our eyes are a real drag.

Check their friends list

If a person has a friends list that numbers in the high double, triple, or even quadruple digits, chances are this person is just a 'collector' and has no interest in interacting with people on a more intimate basis other than being a face on their list.

Look at the pictures on the profiles

A picture is worth a thousand words. If the display picture shows more skin than face and/or highlights parts that would never see the light of day over the course of a normal conversation, chances are this person has already showed you their interpretation of the best parts of them and there's no need to delve in any further.

Read their interests

If someone lists 'sex', 'drinking', 'partying', 'drugs', 'boys', 'girls', 'women', and/or 'men' as one of their hobbies, read no further.

Pay attention to grammar and punctuation

Typos are a fact of written life and some folks' grammar skills might not be up to par with the rest of the world's. Spell checks can fix that very quickly. However, if a person tYpEs LiKe ThIs or types in 'text', it quickly becomes too much of an effort to understand them when no effort is made on their behalf to come off as somewhat legible.

As with anything else you do, make it as enjoyable for yourself as you can. It's fun and exciting to connect with new people from different backgrounds, but having a sense of familiarity is important, too. It's easy to feel intimidated in a situation where you feel like you don't fit in. The key is to find a happy medium between the two to make the transition from MySpace to your space more comfortable.