Making a 'Myspace' Your Space!

Myspace has become a phenomenon with users around the world, allowing for global communication to happen in a matter of moments. It's a website geared for social networking, advertising and sometimes even promotion. Turning a basic Myspace page into a more personal statement is now easier than ever.

Layouts: Tom Anderson, creator of Myspace, has made it very easy to customize your page with Myspace editors, which allow you to change the color and fonts depending on how you like. There are also countless sites on the internet such as www.hotfreelayouts.com or www.mygirlyspace.com, which allow you to browse among thousands of pre-made layouts to transform your Myspace page to your liking. Popular layouts include celebrity photos, scenic layouts, and sport fan pages. It's very simple to use, and consists of copy and pasting a code onto your own Myspace. Most layout websites will offer directions as to how to apply it to your page, but most often the code is simply copied from the website and pasted within a section of the Myspace, labeled "About Me" This code makes is easy for users who do not know HTML to customize their page in a matter of minutes.

Music: Adding music to a Myspace page can offer a way to express feelings, or just sharing your favorite song with others. Within the Myspace page, there is a section labeled 'Music'. This section has thousands of bands in it, ranging anywhere from Top Artists to brand new groups. The music section is a great way to not only find obscure music, but it can also be a forum to showcase your own band. Selecting music for your page is as simple as clicking a mouse. After finding an artist that you like, you find the songs that are offered on a Myspace player. When you decide what song you would like, click 'Add' and it will be instantly added to your personal page.

Uploading Photos: To really make your page personal, you have an option to upload photos into a Myspace photo album located within the profile. While you are able to add them into an album, you would not have access through Myspace to add photos to your profile page. This is where sites like www.photobucket.com come in handy. By uploading your personal photos to these sites, they take the image and give you a URL code, or HTML tag. By adding the HTML tag to your page, it allows for photos of pretty much anything to be added to your profile page. Always be careful when adding photos to your page though, since literally millions of people have a Myspace account. If you don't want people seeing your personal life, don't add it.

Account Settings: Even though almost 200 million people have a Myspace around the world, there is still some sense of privacy. Within the account settings, you are able to set your page to private, meaning only your friends can see your page, and you can also request that you view all comments before they are posted to your page. There is also a feature that only allows people who know your last name or email to even put in a friend request before you OK it. To enhance child safety, you must be 14 years old in order to sign up for a Myspace account. All teens aged 14-15 have an automatic private page, and teens 16 years old have an option to make it public or private. At signup, you enter your date of birth, so Myspace has a way of keeping track of the age of each user. While many teens may find a way to get around this, Myspace is continually looking for ways to make it safe. Recently, Myspace made it impossible for users over 18 to add anyone within the 14-15 age groups unless they previously knew their full name or email address. As with any online social group, teens need to be careful in whom they talk with and share information with, since many people can lie and have false information.