Myspace

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Globe icon of the infobox
Myspace
Website logo
social network
languages multilingual
operator Specific media
editorial staff Thomas Anderson , Chris DeWolfe
Registration Yes
On-line 2003
http://www.myspace.com/
Beta version logo
Logo until October 2010 with the lettering "A Place for Friends"

Myspace (from English my space "my room" or "my place"; also My_____ , formerly MySpace ) is a multilingual, advertising-financed social network that enables its users to set up free user profiles with photos , videos , blogs , groups, etc.

history

MySpace.com was originally a provider of free data storage on the Internet . It wasn't until July 2003 that Tom Anderson founded the community under the same URL . The company was bought in July 2005 by news corporation for $ 580 million. MySpace initially saw user growth of up to 230,000 new members per day. The 100 million mark was broken on August 9, 2006; on September 19, 2009 there were 267,794,915 members. This novel emergence of a global community even drew the attention of the US secret service NSA at times .

The special thing about MySpace since it was founded by Tom Anderson has been the focus on music . Anderson used his contacts to artists and bands and convinced them to set up "their MySpace". This made it possible for bands and fans to get in touch - and that was the biggest success factor of the website at the beginning.

Today, many band spaces are no longer maintained by the musicians themselves, but by fan clubs or management. This is especially the case with well-known artists. Lesser known artists continue to maintain their space themselves. They provide information about the release of new albums and tour dates . Most bands also offer audio samples of individual pieces of music , some even for free download . In addition, users can set up their own pages individually in order to reveal something about themselves, true to the motto “see and be seen”. For many, it is important to make as many “friendships” as possible.

Due to the focus on music, scenes in the MySpace community also formed in the course of its increasing popularity. Since musicians from different countries can communicate with each other via MySpace, a cross-border scene development is possible online. The musicians who make similar music “become friends” and advertise each other through bulletins , comments or blog entries. The creation of scenes has also created an opportunity for musicians to draw the attention of record labels to themselves.

Since the news Corporation bought the domain myspace.com , there has been a trend ( also announced by Rupert Murdoch ) to open the website to other multimedia content, especially films . While Anderson originally wanted to win mainly small, unknown artists for MySpace, Murdoch's strategy is aimed at large, commercial film projects. In the meantime a compilation CD has also been released, on which only artists can be heard who have become known via MySpace and who are under contract with MySpace Records .

In August 2006, a cooperation was agreed with Google , which provides for Google search and Google AdSense to be integrated into MySpace. MySpace received at least $ 900 million for this between 2007 and 2010.

The clear focus on the North American or English-speaking area has not yet visibly changed. As a result, MySpace, the sixth most popular English language and sixth most popular multilingual website according to Alexa Internet , was less well known in continental Europe . At the end of 2006, MySpace started a German beta version, which in January 2007 already had 2.5 million members. A separate Austria version was made available in summer 2007 .

After MySpace was overtaken by its main competitor Facebook in terms of membership in 2008 , the company is working to differentiate itself more from Facebook. Since then, the focus has been less on maintaining existing contacts and more on making new acquaintances. Furthermore, according to Co-President Mike Jones, MySpace should focus on creating a new identity for users, since MySpace is less about real life. In line with this, the network's multimedia image is to be maintained and expanded. Priority is given to options such as listening to music, playing games and watching videos. However, these measures could not stop the decline in membership. Another complicating factor for MySpace is the listen button introduced by Facebook in April 2012, with which users can listen to music by artists directly on their fan page. Facebook implements the offer through a cooperation with various streaming services such as Spotify , Simfy , Rdio or Deezer . The music tracks selected by the user can be viewed by friends via the “Facebook Open Graph”.

In January 2011 it was announced that MySpace would lay off 500 employees worldwide. The German location with 30 employees should be closed. This was a reaction to the bad balance of 2010, which was preceded by a significant loss of membership. In the period from January to March 2011 alone, the global membership of MySpace shrank from 83 to 63 million users, and when it came to page views in Germany, the site also recorded a dramatic drop of almost 70% compared to March 2010 (51 million visitors) 15.73 million clicks.

In June 2011 it was announced that News Corporation was separating from MySpace. The new owner is Specific Media from California, which, according to reports from US media, pays an amount of 35 million US dollars for this, although the News Corporation was initially aiming for a price of 100 million US dollars.

At the beginning of 2012 there were the first positive reports regarding user behavior on MySpace, after the user volume had decreased from 75.9 to 33.3 million users per month in previous years. From December 2011 to February 2012 this downward trend could be stopped; MySpace recorded a user increase of 1 million users during this period.

A beta version of a relaunch of MySpace has been available since the end of 2012 . Previous users of the "old" MySpace will not be taken over here, but will have to register again. So far, however, the registration does not take place immediately, but only after leaving the e-mail address on the page and a subsequent invitation. The new website has a completely new design and is also available for use on the touch screen optimized. The end of the beta phase was initiated in July 2013; With a 20 million US dollar campaign for MySpace, the company is now presenting itself as a social media music portal, based on the motto “Visually amplified, sonically reborn, this is the new social sound system”.

Despite all relaunch efforts, the trend is continuing downhill: In March 2010, MySpace was still the 16th most visited website on the Internet in the Alexa rank , in December 2014 only in position 1,464, in December 2015 in position 1,650, in September In 2016 on rank 2,225, in September 2017 on rank 3,202 and in November 2018 on rank 4,392.

In March 2019 it was announced that MySpace had lost all photos, videos, and audio files uploaded between 2003 and 2016. According to the company, the cause was a failed server move.

criticism

Criticism of MySpace there due to various problems with accessibility , security holes , fake profile pages of celebrities ( fakes ), proliferation of threats , spam -Freundschaftsanfragen for advertising purposes and others. At the end of February 2006 there were reports that over 7,000 account data were to be circulated on the Internet because a security gap had been exploited and the access data could be spied on.

In Internet marketing forums, MySpace profiles with thousands of contacts are sold to enable spammers to cost-effectively send so-called bulletins to all “friends” at the same time. Programs (commonly known as bots ) have also been developed to automatically invite up to 500 friends per day.

Because of the security gaps and permanent technical problems, MySpace was ranked number 1 of the 25 worst Internet sites by PCWorld magazine in September 2006.

At the end of March 2006, around 200,000 user pages were deleted due to excessively revealing representations and other reasons. Criticism was expressed after a case of sexual abuse after establishing contact via the portal; so MySpace has been called a "pedophile hunting ground". But there were also reports of potential young people running amok who presented their arsenal of weapons, for example, and of threats against teachers, classmates and schools.

At the beginning of December 2006, all existing profiles were compared with an American sex offender database. The reason given for doing this was to protect users from harassment. This approach has provoked criticism from data protectionists.

At the end of January 2008, strangers to the online forum TribalWar.com succeeded in downloading photos through a security hole in MySpace that were actually declared private by the respective users and should only be accessible from friendly profiles. Around 44,000 profiles were run through a computer program and around 500,000 private images were downloaded, which were later distributed on the Internet as 17 gigabyte files via BitTorrent .

When accounts are deleted, only a standard email is usually sent and the users are not given a specific reason why the company is being accused of deleting accounts arbitrarily or for ideological reasons. A forum for exchanging information between affected users has also been removed from MySpace. For example, the religion-critical Atheist and Agnostic Group , which with tens of thousands of members had grown into one of the largest user groups on MySpace in the ideological area, was suddenly removed without warning.

There was and still is criticism from the users of myspace due to the change (s) of the design and the associated loss of information previously laboriously compiled by the user.

Web links

Commons : Myspace  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heise online : MySpace has a new owner , June 30, 2011
  2. ↑ Chris DeWolfe , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 46/2007 of November 17, 2007, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
  3. ↑ CNN : MySpace cowboys , August 29, 2006
  4. ↑ MySpace, data mine of the secret services? In: Spiegel Online. June 9, 2006, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  5. ↑ www.simplewelt.com ( Memento from March 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Frank Hornig: Now things really get going . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 2007 ( online - January 8, 2007 ).
  7. ↑ "We are there for the crazy and the wild". In: faz.net. July 5, 2010, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  8. ↑ "Listen" button on Facebook - the end for MySpace? ( Memento of June 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), t3n, April 18, 2012. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  9. ^ Jörg Thoma: Myspace: Subsidiary in Germany will be closed. In: golem.de. January 12, 2011, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  10. ↑ MySpace shrinks by 10 million users a month , March 27, 2011
  11. ^ IVW: New lows for MySpace & VZ-Trio ( Memento from March 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), March 27, 2011
  12. ↑ dpa: Social networks: Myspace sold for $ 35 million. In: zeit.de. June 30, 2011, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  13. ↑ The New York Times : User growth in 2012 , February 12, 2012.
  14. ↑ new.myspace.com ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / new.myspace.com
  15. ↑ digitalbuzz blog: Introducing The New MySpace , January 9, 2013
  16. ↑ AllFacebook.de: The new myspace - Dead people live longer , January 9, 2013
  17. ↑ Myspace (English (US) -speaking homepage): Rebuilt. Redesigned. Reinvented. Request your invite. ( Memento from January 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), January 9, 2013.
  18. ↑ Myspace attracts users as a social media music portal , July 4th 2013.
  19. ↑ myspace.com Site Overview . In: Alexa Internet . Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  20. ↑ Myspace has lost more than ten years of music . In: Golem.de . March 18, 2019. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  21. ↑ Myspace account data is circulating on the web . heise online , February 21, 2006.
  22. ^ The 25 Worst Web Sites
  23. ↑ Financial Times : MySpace acts to calm teen safety fears , March 30, 2006
  24. ↑ Myspace compares user profiles with the sex offender database , December 12, 2006
  25. ^ Peter Mühlbauer : "Bart Simpson Child Fucker" . In: Telepolis . Heise, March 10, 2007 ( online [accessed March 10, 2007]).
  26. ↑ www.myspace.com
  27. ^ Protest at “MySpace” | medienMITTWEIDA. In: medien-mittweida.de. Retrieved December 2, 2016 .