MySpace and Google Searching for Adherents

Associated Content's MySpace Correspondent Rick Amburgey reports in his article Five Things To Leave Off Your My Space Profilefive critical identifying items for new member's of the social networking service's consideration.
Before we link to his article let us consider that MySpace has 130 million accounts (members.) The website's early adopters were high school and college students, who for them this was the ideal communication medium: pictures could be posted and organized on a page along with instant messaging capability. Hours were spent clicking from page to page and then scrolling-down through the posted photos.

Middle school students were the next to get the message, the girls being more advanced developmentally were the first to sign-up (even though there is a 14-year-old age minimum) and the boys, being boys, as they discovered girls (and disregarding their Mad Magazines) followed them.

The last group to discover MySpace is potentially the most dangerous, sinister menace our great nation has ever faced, Senior Citizens; in their endless quest to hook-up with other members of their Medicare Drug Benefits Plan, shook the Federal Government down to it's legislative lobbyist's foundations. Events of this magnitude have the potential to reshape the political structure of our country.

What if politicians start using MySpace? Will members be pleased to have robot-generated messages placed on their pages? In California in it's State of Perpetual Election the medium has truely become the message as television ad time-slots are fully booked by Political Consultants (who get paid a percentage of the total amount paid by the candidates campaign.) They are probably trying to figure-out how to generate enough fake members to create the "critical mass" to generate the robot-generated campaign messages to the MySpace members.

Hundreds of millions of dollars was paid by MySpaces new owner with the expectation that the advertising revenue would start coming once the site start started promoting a major motion picture studio's movies, but that didn't happen, so a deal was made with Search Engine Google to provide search results (and ad's hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars.) But, the change-over hasn't happened after several months. I would think that they would have got right-on-it with the new school season starting and the holidays coming-up, both prime advertising periods.

Can MySpace be used as a gateway to Internet commerce? Yes, I think MySpace has possibilites for this use, but first you have to know how to modify the space to fit your needs. Hacking MySpace: Mods and Customizations to Make MySpace your Space (ExtremeTech) by John Pospisil details some of the ways to alter the MySpace environment.

In recent years the Music Industry has been going through some problems with it's distribution system and has been not re-signing bands and solo artists when their contracts expire. But there are thousands of new Indie bands and dozens of Indie Record Labels to promote their genres. They are using MySpace to promote their music. MySpace Music Marketing: How to Promote & Sell Your Music On the World's Biggest Networking Web SiteBy Bob Baker sounds the notes necessary to get your music heard by the MySpace membership.

Rick Amburgerey's article: Five Things To Leave Off Your MySpace Profilecontains some very good reasons not to reveal everything to your online buddies, for who knows what baddies may be lurking out-there among the 129,999,999 othe MySpace members.

MySpace has more potential for good purposes and only time will reveal what innovations the members will space online as coding goes on.