The MySpace Travel Guide
July 7th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisA librarian recently asked about how to get into MySpace.com to view pictures and information posted by young user that probably should be removed. Here is a quick and dirty travel guide for MySpace.
1) Getting to your Destination.
So you want to visit MySpace.com…okay, fire up the browser and head on over, right? Wrong! Like any travel to a foreign country (and trust me, this is a VERY foreign country for most of us!) you have to do some preparations to make sure you will be safe on your trip. This includes a number of steps:
- I would strongly advise traveling to MySpace using the Firefox browser for its increased ability to stop spyware and other bad things.
- You will want to make sure your computer’s “shots” are up to date - download the latest anti-virus and anti-spyware definition files.
- Take a few deep breaths and put on some calming music in the background. Trust me, some of what you will see on MySpace is going to shock and dismay you. Remember, you are not the “my” in MySpace. This is a different culture with different rules.
2) Prepping your Passport
As you may have seen on so very many Web2.0 sites, your e-mail address has become your passport for entry into this different spaces. MySpace is no different. Sure, you can go and look around a bit, but that would be kind of like saying you have been to Europe because you watched a travel show on PBS. The real deal with MySpace is going on behind the login page. If you want to find someone on MySpace, for instance, you have to be logged in to use the school search. This is one of the more promising ways to locate someone.
Before you hand over your e-mail address to MySpace, however, I must warn you that you will indeed get quite a bit of spam from them. Well, maybe not from the site itself, but from other users. I hate spam. With most of the Web 2.0 sites that I try, this isn’t a problem…not so with MySpace. So, I would strongly recommend that you pick up a temporary passport/e-mail from someplace like TempInBox. All you do is go to the site and make up a temporary e-mail username like “IJustWannaGetIntoMySpace” which will create ijustwannagetintomyspace@tempinbox.com. Then you can go to MySpace and register using that e-mail address. Check back to tempinbox.com to get the registration e-mail so you can confirm.
3) Interacting with the Natives
As noted above, you really have to log in to “use” MySpace. This is, however, a social networking site. That means to log in is to create a social networking node. I.e. a MySpace page of your own. Don’t worry, you don’t have to put anything on it. You can just leave it there so you have access to log in to MySpace. Though….since you are logged in already, you might as well play around with the page a little bit. See why kids like it so much and what not. Change the colors some, fill out a survey, add some music; whatever strikes your fancy.
When you are ready to venture forth to interact with other denizens of MySpace, just head on over to the MySpace search page. What you are looking for is the school search feature. This is probably your best bet for finding someone specific as their username and screenname are very likely not their names. Accounts are linked to schools, though, so that can be a great place to start searching.
4) Embargoes and Other Sanctions
No American travel guide would be complete without directions on how to impose embargoes or order a pre-emptive strike. If you, as a parent, wish to terminate your child’s MySpace page you do have this capability.
There are a couple of resources provided by MySpace: a Safety Tips Page and a Removing Child Profiles page. The other option is to contact MySpace using their online contact form and provide details (i.e. the web address) of the page that you would like removed. MySpace may need to contact you via phone to establish parental status.
5) Return Readjustment
When you get home from a long trip, it can sometimes take a short time to readjust to your daily routine. Though not much physical movement is involved in this journey, there is quite a bit of traveling going on as you cross that rather long bridge over the generation gap. When returning from a trip into MySpace, it may help to relax with a nice cup of tea and a small slice of perspective. Remember, this is TheirSpace. We don’t get it because our social networking takes place in person, via phones, through letters/e-mails or as part of other physical world interactions. That just isn’t the case anymore. It may help to sit in lotus position and chant “I will not freak out” a few times. Freaking out will just not cut it in this case. It isn’t like MySpace and this type of website/interaction method are going anywhere soon…except for up.
According to Alexa, an internet traffic analysis site, MySpace is the number 5 site in the world and number 3 in the US - surpassed only by Yahoo and Google. If, however, you look at page views, MySpace can’t be touched. MySpace currently accounts for about a quarter of page views of people who use the Alexa toolbar…and trust me, that is NOT the target audience for MySpace! More importantly, while MySpace usage has steadily grown over the past year, many large sites - like Yahoo, Amazon, E-Bay and even Google have seen their percentage of the usage rates decline. So when I say that MySpace isn’t going to go away, I mean it. The userbase is now larger than many countries.
6) Some Travel Reading
Here are some books you might want to take along on your journey. A bit of light travel reading, as it were.
-The World is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. Thomas Friedman
- Got Game: how the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. John Beck
- Everything Bad is Good for You: how Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making us Smarter. Steven Johnson
- Instant Calm: Over 100 Easy-to-Use Techniques for Relaxing. Paul Wilson
Bon Voyage…
July 7th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
I have a question. How do you access the kids pages if they are set to “private”?
July 8th, 2006 at 12:42 am
This was a fabulous post. I hope it is distributed widely to help other librarians and parents tour their foreign country (myspace). I would add that parents should check out who is linking to their child’s site to be sure privacy is maintained. You can teach your child to not post sensitive information, but others might post it about your child. Just another safety tip.
July 9th, 2006 at 3:46 am
Very humorous and well written, but a bit over done.
People just love to say how scary MySpace is. Sells papers, right? Temp inbox, virus updates, alternative browser (nothing against Firefox)… give me a break.
Why the fear… Are we are just wired differently? JM
July 9th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Anne: I don’t know of a way, and might be reluctant to disclose it if I did. Some of this still has to come down to parenting, and technology isn’t always much of a help there.
Diane: Thanks! This shows, yet again, why the information ethics standards from Information Power are just as critical as the other two sections. Technology, like many other tools, makes it possible to do many things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to accomplish. That doesn’t mean we should do these things.
John: Over done in what way? If you aren’t using Firefox to browse anything beyond your mainstream portal sites and subscription databases then you are just asking for trouble. There is hype, and then there is the simple reality of explouts, bugs and “features” that make IE a less than safe browser. Add to that the heavy usage of unknown and poorly researched scripts in many profiles, and having anti-spyware software up to snuff isn’t that bad of an idea.
As for the tempinbox, what I hear from many teachers, librarians and parents in workshops is a desire to avoid more spam than they already deal with. As such, they often avoid signing up for Web2.0 sites that want their e-mail. As noted, my personal experience from signing up using a permanant account was a sudden increase in spam that came directly from MySpace. This gives them a safe way to do so - not to mention a way that can’t be tracked back to their address. Poetic licesnse in some areas? Sure. But not all that over done. No fear, just knowledge to prepare.
July 10th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
As I noted above, it is a good idea to update spyware protections and run a non-IE browser like Firefox. There are many reasons going back many years, but here is a very timely article on how a company called Zango is spreading spyware via MySpace profile scripts. MySpace users, like many other comunity sites, use these pre-built scripts to drop in cool tweaks to their pages. This practice of “pimping” one’s profile is a neat idea in theory, but a lack of understanding about computer code leaves users vulnerable to embedded exploits or problem “features” in these scripts.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Its a fabulous post and written humorously.. Well it is also informative.. I had a question, how to protect the kids in a travel to an unknown destination?
November 14th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Its really a hard task of carrying kids, in a travel to an unfamiliar place. I would suggest a certain website that assists in safety travel tips with up-to-date information on travel safety.