This week's column: The Myspace bug

I have a confession to make -- I’ve been bitten by the Myspace.com bug.
I’m not sure how I let it happen, but I let my guard down one night and then "Bam!" just like cooties I was overwhelmed.
I’ve avoided the online networking service for the past year, telling myself I was too good for it.
I kept telling myself I already had a blog, or online journal, and I didn’t need another thing to waste my time.
But then one night, shortly after Christmas, I visited a friend’s online profile and decided I was tired of being "out of the loop."
My friends were joining the service, that boasts itself as "a place for friends," daily and I was being left out.
I usually like to be on the front lines of things and suddenly I found myself following the growing numbers of people who log in daily to share journals, pictures, music and information.
But who needs Myspace? After all I was one of the first ones in my group of friends to get a "real blog" on blogger.com. Why couldn’t they just join my world instead of me joining theres?
So while I had vowed to avoid the Myspace community for so long, I now find myself checking the site almost hourly to be sure I haven’t missed someone wanting to be my friend, or a comment posted by "I'll take the glazed with chocolate covering," a Lancaster cop I met recently at Café Brazil in Dallas (yes, that is the name posted on her online profile).
Sure Myspace sends e-mail updates to alert me when one of my friends have added comments or messages, but if I’m lucky, I can beat my e-mail server and find comments and messages sooner than my e-mail client can notify me.
And if I’m lucky I may get to read a journal entry from my buddy Brandon, who lives in Ohio and apparently hasn’t updated his journal since September 25, 1992.
Since joining Myspace after Christmas I’ve accumulated 26 different friends -- something Brandon says somehow validates our existence in the online world.
Most of my friends are from college but some are from my high school alma mater, and others have simply contacted me through networking groups, designed to join people with similar interests.
The site is almost like a large "Six steps to Kevin Bacon."
Your list of friends and network expands as you add more friends to your profile.
I’m roommates with "Mattchew", who’s brothers with "All Things New", who’s friends with Christian artists Michelle Tumes and Rebecca St. James, which makes me friends with Michelle Tumes and Rebecca St. James.
If I’m lucky, one of my friends will give me true validation and put me on their list of Top 8 friends, showing people I really do exist.
Many are suggesting that an alternative community is developing within the boundaries of Myspace.
With over 46-million users it is one of top 10 English websites in the world.
The site and service was first founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson, the current president and Chris DeWolfe, the current CEO.
In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, parent company of Fox Broadcasting, paid $580-million to buy out IntermixMedia, the former owners of the site.
With so much attention given to the online community, companies and celebrities are quickly jumping on board.
Madonna, Green Day and other artists have their own profiles in the online community that are typically maintained by publicists or record labels, but are many times maintained by the artists themselves.
There’s even a growing number of politicians joining the community. Politicians wanting to gain as much exposure as possible are joining up and marketing their thoughts and campaigns to the growing number of users.
The online Republican group has 27,100 members to date and the online Democratic group has 31382 members.
Victoria Bernal a community building associate with the Benton Foundation writes "creating a successful online community is one of the most sought after and elusive goals in a Web strategy."
Bernal said huge sums of money are spent to perfect online strategies to build community, customer relationships and loyal customers.
In the non-profit community, clients, grantees and citizens take the roll of customer.
"The (non-profits) stakes are higher because usually the nonprofit’s goal is to sell not a product, but a mission," said Bernal. "In this context, an online community can be a powerful tool to bring constituents together to share their concern for an issue."
Nonprofits can use online communities to increase visibility about an issue of concern, mobilize concerned citizens to advocate a political support fundraising efforts by connecting donors and members, announce current events to the public and to recruit volunteers for the organization.
Many credit Howard Dean’s early success in the 2004 Presidential Elections, with his ability to join people online behind his cause.
But while Myspace works to improve community and networking, parents need to remember that the information their 14-year-old posts on their profile is available to all 46-million users with very little effort.
Parents need to keep a constant watch on what information their children are posting online. Start your own profile and join your child’s network of friends. Don’t let them navigate online alone.
Well, that’s it for this week, I believe "Dr Rosenrosen" has just updated his online journal. If I hurry I can be the first to comment on it.