by Ray Langley

Created on: September 23, 2010

The thrills and chills of MySpace

Before MySpace and other social networks, the internet users could only communicate through chat rooms and emails. Plain lines of text scrolling up the screen, some fonts were crazy colors; others had little pictures, with the most exciting thing being an emoticon. Then MySpace came along, completely changing the game for internet chat rooms. From the beginning, the basic MySpace changed everything, before it was even interesting. Then as other social networks entered the market, the whole experience began to evolve. MySpace is continually changing and adding features, applications while maintaining security for the users.

From day one, MySpace was already better then anything that was in the market at that time, by introducing the profile page. This was an introduction to the users’ friends and acquaintances with photographs, interests, and it played music. Adding friends would link the profiles together, making it easy to locate third party friends. MySpace still had its own version of the boring chat scroll, yet it was a photo album, a birthday calendar, contact with friends and a statement from the user to the public. All of which is better then just the silly emoticons, and colored fonts.

Then the Applications and playing browser games through MySpace began, video channels, and MySpace karaoke all added to the experience as it continues to evolve as a social network. With these new additions, there came new threats, as members were encouraged to increase their gaming network, beyond the number of people they knew personally. This opened the door to spammers, and stalkers who use the gaming as a cover to meet naïve people on MySpace. The social network responded by integrating safety features that would allow users to block and report abusers. Ultimately, it is up to the user not to share personal information with strangers online.

The chilling fact is that the other users may not be whom their profile claims, and users should only trust people they know personally. While MySpace was a major advancement to the social aspect of the internet, it also exposed more people to danger and stalking, by strangers. Only use a nickname, do not put your real date of birth, and change the security settings to private so strangers cannot view the page anonymously, but the users’ friends can still have access.  Using MySpace can be thrilling for users who love to personalize their profiles, but it can become chilling if the user shares too much with strangers.

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