Plunge into Deep MySpace

As we all know, Myspace.com is one of the most popular names in social media today. However, it has a reputation amongst professionals of being basically a big teen hangout and not worth time for anybody with serious motives. The age breakdown might be a bit of a surprise, though. Interestingly, in this article on MSNBC, Myspace responded to a question about age breakdown by saying they don’t discuss the age breakdown (weird response). In this post by ZDNET, we see that there is a drop in the usage by younger people and a marked increase in use by adults. In fact, teenager use of Myspace, according to that survey, is now sitting just under 12% of the total community while 40-50% of the community is over 35.

What does this mean? It means that, as web publisher, most likely much of our potential public is on Myspace. More importantly, as a provider of a service on the internet, many of your potential customers are on Myspace. And, as you might expect then, more and more businesses are now setting up profiles on Myspace. And that is what I just did, as you can see here. I have stayed clear of creating a profile on Myspace for the longest time mainly because I saw no point. But, its so easy that I might as well set up shop there.

Now, using Myspace for business purposes is not easy, and truth be told, I don’t exactly plan to use Myspace as some kind of involved promotional medium. Myspace is a networking site, and thus, can be used to network your business. It will take a lot of work, because like any networking site, the only ways to make lots of contacts is to proactively be out on the site, posting to other’s profiles, getting friends, etc. And you can’t be overt about commercializing your presence because it can be seen as the equivalent of spam and nobody will pay any attention to you. But, used properly, a Myspace profile can be used to:

• Network with others of similar interest
• Promote your business through your friends network
• Monitor market trends and interests
• Use your friends to gauge interest in new products and services

I should also mention here that, in my opinion, most Myspace profiles are horribly ugly. Some people keep the default Myspace profile design which is quite clean, but also very boring. Most customize their profile. Myspace does not provide any built-in way to design your profile. Instead, people do it by pasting CSS code directly into their “About Me” sections and essentially overriding Myspace’s CSS with their own. In short, you’re basically jerry-rigging your profile. If you view source on my Myspace profile, you’ll see that there’s a HUGE block of CSS code mid-way in the code and it is that code which makes my profile look different. I have made an effort to make my profile fairly professional looking, but most users’ profiles are like a blast from the 90’s, complete with HORRIBLE background images, embedded music, you name it. If you are going to create a profile for your business or as a professional, definitely DON’T create an ugly profile that makes you look like an amateur.

Lastly, if you are conducting business on the internet or have a fairly noticeable presence online, if you don’t have a Myspace profile, I think you should create one if for no other reason than to protect your own identity. The last thing you need is somebody creating a profile with your name and then making a mess of your reputation.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.