About Myspace

This page contains information about myspace as well as a personal review of the services that myspace provides.

Myspace Logo, Courtesy News Corp./Myspace.

Myspace can be described as a website that helps people keep in touch with friends as well as make new friends online. Membership is free and the site is heavily supported by the ads located practically everywhere on the site. When you sign up for myspace you get your personal website, known as your personal profile, which is what identifies you as a myspace user. Your personal profile contains several fields that describe you. Some of the most commonly filled out fields are "about me", "my interests" (sub-categories include: music, movies, television and books), "my schools/education", "income", "people I'd like to meet" and personal details, such as age, location and a personal quote that goes next to your picture. Myspace users are allowed to upload up to 12 pictures per account. One of the 12 pictures is your default picture, which means that it will be displayed on your main profile page. When someone clicks on your default picture they go to your picture gallery.

How do you communicate with others on myspace?

Contacting User Menu, Image Courtesy Myspace.

Users communicate with each other through the user menu located on each personal profile page. There are several ways to contact the person whose profile you are currently viewing. Underneath their default picture and basic information, there is a generic user menu. While visiting someone's profile, you can send them a message, post a profile comment on their page, make a friend request (if they are not yet on your friends list) or invite them to join your group (myspace groups are explained later). You can also instant message from this menu. Myspace IM isn't perfect by any means and is merely a licensed flash-based chat program that opens a new browser window. It's usable and it works, but cannot be compared to widely-used services such as AIM, MSN or Yahoo instant messengers, for example.

Perhaps the two most-used actions from this menu are Send Message and Add to Friends. ANy myspace user can send a message to anyone. However, to post a comment on someone's personal profile you need to be on their friends list, and that's what Add to Friends button is all about. By clicking on it, you send a "friendship request" to the owner of the profile. After the owner accepts your friend request you will be allowed to post comments on the given user's profile. Profile comments can be viewed by anyone who browses myspace whether they are on the given user's friend's list or not, which includes even unregistered users. Because of this, myspace often provides a voyeuristic experience to the site user. People browse personal profiles going from one profile to the next, sometimes clicking on pictures of the comment posters or the top 8 friends (The "top 8" are the eight friends displayed on any given profile, it will be explained below).

Default Myspace profile layout.

To the left is a miniature ( 25% of real size ) screenshot of a myspace profile. This profile has no layouts applied to it. By default the blue areas indicate user interests (music,television,books,etc...), schools and other personal details. The white space is the "about me" section. In this section users are allowed to use HTML code, display images and above all write a few sentences about themselves. The orange bar is where the comments go.

What makes myspace appealing for the majority of users is the ability to modify the default profile layout, font and colors. People use Myspace Profile Editors to customize their profiles. In the early days myspace didn't have its own tools to customize profiles but due to popularity of the emerging profile editors, they decided to make their own. One of the most popular profile editors for myspace was and probably still is the thomas myspace profile editor (version 2.5 / version 3.5).

However, these profile decorations have a negative side and come at a price of site usability. Because many myspace users do not have experience with HTML or CSS script you will often see badly designed profiles with crude background images filling up the space and making it much harder to read the actual body of the about me and interests sections. As a side note, a website known as chatcake takes these problems in consideration. Obviously their site is inspired by the myspace phenomenon, however chatcake developers are building a site that "fixes" most of myspace weak spots or at least tries to be a bit more smart about general website design issues.

What does top 8 mean on myspace?

At one point in time myspace added a feature known as the top 8. Previously, profile owner's friends were displayed on his or her profile in the order who was added to the friends list first. For example when you join myspace, one of the creators of myspace, Tom, is added to your friends list automatically and will occupy the #1 spot. When you accept consequent friends requests, your new friends will fall into the second, third, and so on... placement and remain there permanently. With the "top 8" feature, the user is allowed to change the top 8 friend's arrangement on their profile page. Usually people place most important friends into the leading spot where Tom used to be at.