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The Presence Of Business On MySpace

By Zinn Jeremiah

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 28Oct2007
Word count: 442
Viewed: 390 time(s)

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MySpace is now truly a household word. On its face that would seem to be a good thing, but a closer inspection may reveal something different. There’s a tendency among the public, sometimes, to tune out or even become resentful towards highly popular brands, whether those brands be people or products. Maybe this reflects enviousness towards the material success people presume popularity brings, or maybe it’s just that something people see or hear about often becomes tiresome.

In the case of MySpace, what was once mostly a virtual gathering spot for teens has been covered from every different angle by the mass media. As the mass media has told the story of MySpace, naturally millions of people far and wide have heard. This is the nature of the media, after all. The appearance of the media in MySpace land however may have given core MySpace users the impression that their territory had been intruded upon, and even sold out to mainstream interests.

The feeling of MySpace going corporate may have left a particularly significant impression on MySpace users. At one time, mega companies Burger King and WalMart had MySpace profiles. Both profiles have since been abandoned and at least in WalMart’s case it appears their profile was removed as a direct result of generating bad publicity. It seems many MySpace users were not happy with WalMart’s presence on MySpace, and expressed as much through harsh comments left on WalMart’s MySpace profile. So the profile is now gone.

The WalMart scenario may have been a lesson not just that for that company, but for MySpace as well. MySpace has apparently been surpassed in popularity by Facebook, the networking site explicitly for students. Is this due to the general feeling that MySpace had become overrun and corrupted by commercial interests? It’s certainly a valid possibility. It’s notable that Facebook does show advertising, but under the Facebook format corporate profiles are not allowed: not yet anyway. Perhaps users of any online site have accepted seeing advertising, but not the notion of embracing advertisers as regular members of the community.

All of this isn’t to suggest that MySpace is now somehow irrelevant: there are still hundreds of millions of MySpace profiles, and almost certainly millions and millions of MySpace members. But if there is something to be taken from the response to corporate presences on MySpace it may be that business sites should be presented with a light touch and without an obvious motivation to increase sales or to generate publicity. As with any other community, becoming an accepted part of MySpace takes time and a respectful effort.

Zinn Jeremiah is a freelance author. To read more of Zinn's writings, visit article exchange. For MySpace layout help, visit MySpace layouts.

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