Networking Features: 

After a quick registration, establish your profile page with background information such as where you’re from, what you look like and where you attend(ed) school. Additional information describes your personality, your likes, dislikes and interests.

Customize your profile page to reflect your personality with customized skins, upload dozens of photos and add music and videos to your page. Make your profile viewable to everyone on MySpace or use your privacy settings to limit who can access your page such as your circle of friends or block individual members.

Every time you login, you can see who is online and strike up a conversation or browse through members’ profiles. When you click on a member’s photo or name, you can view their profile, post comments and invite them into your circle of friends. When you add someone new to your circle, their friends are also added. After only a few invites, your circle of friends can increase to dozens of people. Additionally, you can browse, join and post comments on hundreds of Blogs and Forums.

Extra Features: 

The many extras on MySpace include Games, TV On Demand, Music, Books, Events and Videos. MySpace also has an international section, so you can network with people all over the world.

Dozens of games are offered on MySpace; choose from six categories: Action, Arcade, Card & Board, Puzzles, Sports and Word & Trivia. Numbers next to the game title indicate how many MySpace members are currently playing. Click on “See Who’s Online” and challenge someone to a game.

There is plenty to watch on MySpace with TV On Demand, music videos and member-generated videos. Watch entire episodes of a select group of television shows, the latest music videos or search the thousands of member–created videos by subject or keyword.

The exceptional music section consists of a huge database and is often used by new artists to promote their music. You can search for music by artist, album or genre and access the artist’s profile page. Read the artists’ biography, listen to their songs and watch their videos as well as download them to your profile page. You can also post comments.

Groups: 

MySpace has a large selection of Groups for MySpace members who want to connect with people who share their interests. Join as many Groups as you want. Choose from over 20 categories like Games, Sports & Recreation, Jobs/Career, Religion & Beliefs and Schools & Education. Next to each Group category is a number indicating how many Groups exist in that category. With 10,000 or more Groups for each category, there is no shortage of choice.

Monitored Content/Security: 

Due to the young age of many MySpace users—the minimum age allowed for membership is 14 years, MySpace does a great job of monitoring their website for adult content and sexually explicit photos. The chance of a teenager searching for or accidentally coming across explicit content is low.

As a test, we entered several sexually related keywords in the search box for videos and searched through messages in some Group categories; we did not find content any more objectionable than primetime TV.

There were some Groups that presented an “18 year old only” warning; we simply had to agree that we were 18 years old to be let in; however, we still did not find any objectionable content. We did find some questionable content in the Blog section consisting of risqué photos and some curse words.

MySpace provides contact information to report suspected underage members and objectionable content. They also have a useful section on online safety tips for MySpace users and tips for parents, which include instructions for parents who want to limit or delete their kids’ profiles.

Ease of Use: 

Whether you’re just browsing or actively searching for content, MySpace is easy to use. There are dozens of links on each page (including profile pages), but it doesn’t appear cluttered. A menu list of all the website’s major sections and sub–sections are located at the top of each page, which makes it easy to navigate the site.

It takes only minutes to become a member—provide your first and last name, country, zip code and an email address. Then you can fill out information on your profile, upload photos and start establishing your circle of friends.

Summary: 

MySpace lives up to its reputation as the most popular social networking site. There is a wide variety of networking features to customize your profile page and connect with other members. MySpace’s extra features allow members to listen to their favorite music, watch their favorite TV shows and watch user–generated videos. MySpace also does a good job of monitoring their content.