MySpace.com
As MySpace.com and Internet sites like it have gone from being a passing fancy to being part of the culture, teens and young adults can't imagine life without them--though how they use them varies.
Matt Nichols sometimes spends hours a day meeting new friends and contacting old ones. The Fort Thomas teen keeps up with this busy social life sitting in front of his computer, trading messages with buddies on the immensely popular Web site MySpace.com.
Nichols, 16, counts at least 274 friends on MySpace, and said he met many of them through the site.
He's just one of more than 100 million people who socialize through the Web site that has become one of the world's most visited online destinations. After the online portal Yahoo and blockbuster search engine Google, MySpace is the busiest Web site in the nation.
It's populated largely by teen-agers like Nichols who can create free accounts that allow them to have Web space to post a picture and personal information on their own user page. The site has become so popular that it got the attention of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp. and Fox News, who bought the site this summer for $580 million.
But for teens and other users, it's all about socializing.
"You can get to know people a lot easier," Nichols said. "It skips the awkward parts of conversation because you already know what you have in common with the person."
Users can post their favorite music, movies, books, fill in an "About Me" section and post pictures. They can also post religious and political affiliations, body type, work and school details and their hometown. Based on a user's information, others can send messages to start a conversation and get to know a person further.
Nichols has been on the site for about a year and spends each morning reading messages from his friends and replying to them.
"It's kind of like a step up from e-mail," he said.
MySpace is the leader in an explosion of Web sites that allow people to socialize and network online. The sites include Blogger.com. Classmates Online, Xanga and Facebook. The top 10 sites saw traffic grow 47 percent in the last year, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings.
"I think people just want to express themselves and the Internet is a good place to do that," said Nancy Jennings, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati who has studied children's media.
She said people who use social networking Web sites build significant ties, which are used throughout life as a means of finding jobs and connecting to new people. "You never know who you're going to meet that you help you out in life," she said.
Stephanie Leonard, 15, also of Fort Thomas, uses the site to keep up with friends who don't live around her.
"It's kind of like a little piece of your life," she said.
Once into the MySpace world, users are able to browse other profiles, create their own, invite others to join the Web site and add people as friends - users who have full access to view profiles and can leave comments.
Nichols used the site during summer vacation as a way to make plans with friends for the day or keep up with friends during the break.
His profile is public, so anyone, whether they are a MySpace user or not, can access his page.
"I like to be accessible," he said. "If someone is talking to you too much (on the site) you can choose to ignore them."
Leonard doesn't want to deal with harassing people online, so she only talks to people she knows. She wanted to keep in contact with friends she made during a church camp last year, so she created a MySpace page.
Unlike millions of others, Leonard keeps all of her profile private, meaning only her friends can see her personal information, photographs, online journal entries and friends list.
"Mainly because of the horror stories you hear about MySpace," she said.
The Web site has made national headlines as sexual assaults, identity thefts and physical attacks have been linked to people meeting there.
In Chicago, a 14-year-old girl was raped by at least three teenage boys after she agreed to meet them in person after becoming friends with them on MySpace. And in Detroit, a 35-year-old man was arrested and charged with assaulting a 31-year-old female after the two had met online and decided to go out for drinks together. Police used the networking site to locate the man and found three other women who he also allegedly assaulted.
MySpace quickly made changes to help with privacy and security. Users can set their profile to private, where only "friends" can view their pages. The site also has posted safety tips for its users, which reminds users their forums are public spaces.
"Don't post anything you wouldn't want the world to know," it states. It also tells users that people aren't always who they say they are and to be careful about adding strangers to friend lists.
The site also has tips for parents to use as guidelines for their children's use of MySpace as well as offers monitoring software information. It warns users to keep profiles private, meaning only friends can see a user's page, to avoid these situations and people stealing photos or information from users.
Murdoch's News Corp. is sponsoring a multi-million dollar Internet safety campaign including television and online advertising.
The profiles of 14- and 15-year-old users are automatically set to private - where only friends can view the profile. Once users are 16, they have the option of keeping their profile private or making it public - where anyone can view the page, regardless of MySpace membership.
Detective Kelli Cassidy, who works for a computer investigation task force set up by Cincinnati police and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department, said while sexual predators often use the Internet to meet their victims, the task force has seen few criminal problems stemming from MySpace.
"It's not like a chat room where people are actually meeting and carrying on a conversion. It's just a Web site with profiles," said Cassidy.
Chat rooms are where they catch most their criminals, Cassidy said. "With all the publicity My Space has gotten over the past year, I think people are putting less sensitive information on there like home addresses."
Cassidy said the biggest thing parents could do is supervise what their children are doing on the Internet.
"A lot of parents have no clue what their kids do online," Cassidy said. "The best security is to watch your children."
Regardless of the horror stories, people still use the site to find and meet new people.
A trio of Cincinnati natives did just that last month, when they traveled throughout the United States staying with people they met on the site.
Northern Kentucky University students Melissa Elrod and Jasmine Williamson, along with NKU alumnus Jonny Nicholas traveled across the country to make a documentary on the Web site for Elrod's senior project. The documentary focuses on social networking sites, the impact they have on society and why people use them.
The trio made their way south through Tennessee then west toward Texas during their first week. They stopped in New Mexico, Las Vegas, northern California and Idaho before making their way back to Cincinnati. They stayed with MySpace users they had met online and friends of their families as well as at a few hotels.
Though Elrod and her friends stayed with people they've never met, others use the Web site to find people they used to know.
Paul D., who asked for his last name to be withheld, said social networking an easy way to meet new people, without the bar scene.
"It's safer than clubbing and more convenient to find people you already know, but haven't seen in a while," he said.
The 34-year-old Batavia resident said he's had a MySpace account for a few months and usually checks his Web page two or three times a day.
Users can search for other members of MySpace by high school, college, hometown, age group, height, interests, religion, political affiliation, zip code and more - making finding an old classmate, roommate or neighbor easy. Users can use the site to search movies, music, books, careers and as a search engine.
Each user chooses a display name, which can be changed at any time, that they will be known as on the site. Display names vary from actual names, nicknames, celebrity names and quotes.
On MySpace, a person can pose as anyone. More than 20 MySpace profiles have Britney Spears' name attached to them. Angelina Jolie, professional snowboarder Shaun White and other celebrities have several false profiles made by MySpace members.