Many people have now heard of the ubiquitous MySpace.com, livejournal.com, xanga.com, facebook.com, and a few other similar sites that connect friends in an online environment. I am not a "user," yes note the drug-like addiction connotation of all of these sites but I do enjoy my space on MySpace.com. While the website is not particularly hard to navigate, I am going to show parts about MySpace that I learned about from friends and now enjoy using. When I first started, I had a simple profile and didn't expand beyond that. I didn't understand the point of it.

There are many things that you can do on MySpace.com, including sending messages to people as if it was e-mail. This is a pretty typical thing on most interacting websites including www.neopets.com and www.facebook.com. Other cool things that you can do is write a comment on their profile put up (a) picture(s) of yourself and get rated on how handsome you are. My friend has a picture of himself that's rated a 5.7/10 and another that's rated a 9.3/10. Its all about the picture, so make sure to put up a good one if you want a good rating.

The thing that makes me nervous about MySpace is the lack of security on it. Other people can decide to post pictures of you. Of course, you can still use your own profile with a list of all of your personal information, name, age, date of birth, social security number, or whatever else you want to put up there. Just kidding. But it really does include the former three. This means to most people that you should fib about everything (I was born April 11, 1919), put up the ugliest or best pictures of yourself, and of course fiddle with the settings to allow only your friends see your info, or you could deal with the much creepier idea of stalkers.

Many of the sites are the same but MySpace does still have a unique brand. It's a great way for bands to advertise and in fact many do, with their ability to put up sound clips of themselves and their music. If you are willing to take the chance of creepy people on the web, MySpace still offers you a general way to make new friends. Sometimes from places you've never even heard of (in the United States and abroad!). You can also meet people in the local area because the program allows you to search for people in your specific area, which is admittedly kind of cool. MySpace allows you to make all points bulletins such that all of your friends can be alerted of something funny, cool, or exciting. I've gotten posts like that which have varied from simple joke to Bill proposed!!!!! So, MySpace really has become quite a commonplace phenomenon in the world today.

There are some negatives about MySpace. Because it's about you and there are no ways to restrict someone from joining the network (even if it's as simple as demanding a college e-mail address, the security risk is higher. As a result of the randomness of the people and the ways in which MySpace works, people tend to meet and allow people they don't know to read their profile and their personal information. Another largely off-putting feature of MySpace is that the people, whom you meet on it, will probably never see you ever or ever again.

MySpace does have its ups and downs but its really a fun site to meet people or keep in touch with people who also have a MySpace. Happy webhunting and enjoy your new found knowledge about how to use the wonderful website of MySpace.