Network with MySpace
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Written by Atila on August 21, 2008 – 8:50 pm
MySpace is a leading social networking Web site that allows you to build lists of friends and interact with people all over the world through profile pages, pictures, videos, and blogs. The MySpace community has over 200 million members and is one of the most popular Web sites in the United States. Despite the common misconception that MySpace is only for young people, millions of adults and businesses use MySpace as a vehicle to manage reputation, build brand recognition, promote products, and generate buzz.
MySpace is a leading social networking community that enables you to build lists of contacts and interact with people all over the world through profile pages, pictures, videos, and blogs. According to Alexa, MySpace is one of the top five most popular Web sites in the United States. The MySpace community has over 200 million members and includes people of all ages and demographics. Despite the common misconception that MySpace is used only by teenagers, millions of adults and businesses use MySpace as a vehicle to manage reputation, build brand recognition, promote products, and generate buzz. The first step to becoming a member of the MySpace community is to open a free account and create a profile page.
The name of your profile page serves as your URL extension on the www.myspace.com domain. For example, if your profile name is “pepperjamsearch,” then your public MySpace profile address would be www.myspace.com/pepperjamsearch. Therefore, when you use MySpace for business purposes, you should try to name your profile page after your business, or you can name your profile page using keywords that describe the products or services you sell.
Although MySpace was created as a personal social networking Web site and not as a place to conduct business, thousands of companies use the MySpace community as a “test group” to gauge new products or advertising campaigns. When you use MySpace to promote your business or build interest around a new product or service, you can use the About Us portion of your profile to provide potential contacts with a concise overview of your company or product and its key benefits. You should explain why your product is unique and why a potential visitor might want to take action and learn more. You can use your MySpace profile page to further explain the benefits of your company, or add pictures, videos, and more.
MySpace allows you to customize your profile page using HTML in areas such as About Me, I’d Like to Meet, and Interests. You can add videos and Flash-based content using HTML. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace. Using MySpace editors, a user can change the basic appearance of his page by entering a CSS element to override the page’s default style sheet. You can use MySpace editors to tweak fonts and colors, but users complain of limitations due to poorly structured HTML used on the default MySpace profile page. User-added CSS is located in the middle of the page instead of being located in the <head> element, which means that the page begins to load with the default MySpace layout before changing to the custom layout.
A special type of modification is a div overlay, where the default layout is dramatically changed by hiding default text with <div> tags and large images. There are several independent Web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities that let users select options and preview what their page will look like with the design utility. MySpace has recently added its own Profile Customizer to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS-loading delay issue because the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile.
