My Space

Social WWW Project (Option 1)

The web is not only a source of vast, unfiltered information but a new social experience in which people from the corners of the globe can come together and share a wide array of useful and useless information. Sites like "MYSPACE" and "FaceBook" have opened a new realm of web-based social interaction. For the purpose of this paper, I will discuss some of my experiences, (pros and cons) with MySpace and attempt to make sense of this new social phenomenon.

I will start with the pros. I created a MySpace account two years ago simply because a friend of mine who lives on the east coast contacted me and suggested I do so. I went through the initial set up process and inputted my personal information. I would like to state that I was very vague on the more personal questions they asked such as "What is your sexual orientation?" or "What is your annual income?" For myself, I was raised to keep some personal information private.

At first the Myspace experience was great. I found my high school in the search engine and saw some faces that I had not seen in quite some time. I sent "friend requests to a select few and had some great online conversations via the instant messenger that the site provided. I received advice from the "MySpace veterans" pertaining to privacy. I did not know at the time but my account was "open" and any site member could view my personal web-page. This was quickly remedied.

I was impressed with the overall layout of the site including the user friendly interface and the endless customization options that were provided. I enjoyed the fact that you could potentially meet new people from all over the world. Professionally, MySpace is a great site for networking, marketing and advertising. In my 4 month experience, I saw a large increase of advertising on the site usually targeting the 16-25 demographic.

Now the cons. Sites such as MySpace are here to stay but I think there is a serious problem with the path we are on socially. Technological advances in communications over the past 20 years have created a social dichotomy in which we do not have to physically interact with one another in order to communicate. This technology; cell phones, pagers, PDA's, laptops, video conferencing, ect., has set a new social precedent. Kids can sit at home and play video games with their friends online instead of hanging out together. This problem is definitely prevalent within the MySpace world. I found that communicating via chat rooms, blogs, and instant messaging can be extremely disconcerting. First, these types of communication are impersonal. Typed text cannot

convey personal human traits such as voice inflection and physical reactions (verbal and non-verbal)