Myspace

Introduction
Myspace (previously stylized as MySpace and My_____) is a social networking service with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and pop music singer and actor Justin Timberlake. Myspace was launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In June 2012, Myspace had 25 million unique U.S. visitors. Myspace was founded in 2003 and was acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million. From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009, though Myspace generated $800 million in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year. Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. As of June 2013,
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Myspace was ranked 303 by total web traffic, and 223 in the United States.

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History of MySpace
Beginnings: 20032005

Fox Interactive Media headquarters, 407 North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills, California, where Myspace is also housed. In August 2003, several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw potential in its social networking features. The group decided to mimic the more popular features of the website. Within 10 days, the first version of Myspace was ready for launch, implemented using ColdFusion. A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity was available for the site. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.
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Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of

Original logo
The MySpace.com domain was originally owned by YourZ.com, Inc., intended until 2002 for use as an online data storage and sharing site. By 2004, it was transitioned from a file storage service to a social networking site. A friend, who also worked in the data storage business, reminded Chris DeWolfe that he had earlier bought the domain MySpace.com. DeWolfe suggested they charge a fee for the basic Myspace service. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping Myspace free was necessary to make it a successful community. Rise to popularity: 20052008 Myspace quickly gained popularity among teenage and young adult social groups. Some employees of Myspace, including DeWolfe and Berman, were able to purchase equity eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was bought. In July 2005, in one of the company's first major Internet purchases, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises) purchased Myspace for US$580 million. News Corporation had beat out Viacom by offering a higher price for the website, and the
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in the property before MySpace and its parent company

purchase was seen as a good investment at the time. Of the $580 million purchase price, approximately $327 million has been attributed to the value of Myspace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion. Within a year, Myspace had tripled in value from its purchase price. Tom Freston, chief executive officer of ViaCom, meanwhile lost his job soon after losing the bidding war for Myspace. News Corporation saw the purchase as a way to capitalize on Internet advertising, and drive traffic to other News Corporation properties.

On November 1, 2007, Myspace and Bebo joined the Googleled OpenSocial alliance, which already included Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning and SixApart. OpenSocial was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks. Facebook remained own social networking site Orkut in the U.S. market and was using the alliance to present a counterweight to Facebook. Decline: 20082012 On April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook Myspace in the Alexa rankings.[45][46] Since then, Myspace has seen a continuing
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independent. Google had been unsuccessful in building its

loss of membership, and there are several suggestions for its demise, including the fact that it stuck to a "portal strategy" of building an audience around entertainment and music, whereas Facebook and Twitter continually launched new features to improve the social-networking experience. A former Myspace executive suggested that the US $900 million three-year advertisement deal with Google, while being a short-term cash windfall, was a handicap in the long run. That deal required Myspace to place even more ads on its already heavily advertised space, which made the site slow, more difficult to use, and less flexible. Myspace could not experiment with its own site without forfeiting revenue, while rival Facebook was rolling out a new clean site design. In late February 2011, News Corp officially put the site up for sale, which was estimated to be worth $50200 million. Losses from last quarter of 2010 were $156 million, over double of the previous year, which dragged down the otherwise strong results of parent News Corp. The deadline for bids, May 31, 2011, passed without any above the reserve price of $100 million being submitted It has been during the most recent quarter deterred many potent suitors. On 13 June 2013, it was reported that MySpace deleted nearly all existing user content and discontinued "Classic MySpace" without consulting its remaining users in a reset of
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said that the rapid deterioration in Myspace's business

the site. The mass deletion, which took place without giving users any warning or opportunity to back up their personal data, caused an unprecedented outcry from thousands of users who had lost years' worth of blog entries, emails from loved ones who had since died, and games in which they had made considerable monetary investments. Many users demands MySpace to bring those back.

Website features
Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a Myspace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days. Myspace had a "Groups" feature that allowed a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups could be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group could choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join. In November 2010, the group feature was turned off; a user clicking on the "Groups" link in the were being revamped, and the user could sign up to be informed of when groups would come back. However, As of May 2012 it now states in the Help page "For now, Myspace groups are not available. This is part of an ongoing effort to simplify Myspace and improve the experience for everyone.
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features menu was led to a page that announced that groups

Although we removed groups, Myspace is still the perfect destination to stay connected." Myspace Polls is a feature on Myspace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users. MySpace uses an implementation of Telligent Community for its forum system.[87] In 2009, Myspace also added a new status update feature. If a Myspace user has a Twitter account, the tweet will also update the Myspace status. (Facebook also has a similar feature.) It does, however, require that the two accounts be synched up together. Moods Moods are small emoticons that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007. The mood feature as of 2010 is not included by default with the status updates, but could be shared on the homepage as a separate update. Blurbs, blogs, multimedia Profiles contain two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. In the "Details" section, "Status" and "Zodiac Sign" fields will always display.
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However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. Myspace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image", the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. A photo editor powered by Fotoflexer is available which can not only crop images and adjust contrast but also convert the image to a cartoon or a line drawing made with neon lights, or put the user's face in a photo of a $100 bill. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Blogging features are also available. These features could be hidden on a profile by using the module customizer or using HTML and CSS codes. Photos could be displayed on the Myspace profile instead of a link that it was used in previous years. Photos can be made into a slide show. Comments "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. Myspace users have the option to delete any comment or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted,
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Below

the

User's

Friends

Space

(by

default)

is

the

and replaced with the comment saying "This Profile No Longer Exists". The option of using HTML in comments could be enabled or disabled.

Profile customization
Myspace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me", "I'd Like to Meet", and "Interests". Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via Myspace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on Myspace. There are several independent web sites offering Myspace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them.

Music Myspace profile, becoming the first Myspace musician. Myspace profiles for musicians in the website's Myspace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload their entire discographies consisting of MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their
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In late 2003 Fin Leavell encoded his personal music into a

own work, permission granted, etc.). Unsigned musicians can use Myspace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which proved popular among Myspace users. Shortly after Myspace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News and 20th Century Fox, in 2005, they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on Myspace Music.[29] Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, artists can upload their songs onto Myspace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lily Allen, Owl City, Sean Kingston, Arctic Monkeys and Drop Dead, Gorgeous gained fame through Myspace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by Myspace and many more continue to be discovered daily.[89] In late 2007, the site launched The MySpace Transmissions, a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists.

Redesigns Past redesigns Throughout 2007 and 2008, Myspace redesigned many of the features of its site in both layout and in function. One of

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the first functions to be redesigned was the user home page, with features such as status updates, applications, and subscriptions being added in order to compete with Facebook. In 2008, the Myspace homepage was redesigned. Myspace Music was redecorated in 2008 and 2009, making it more like an online music store similar to iTunes and Rhapsody, along with the ability to create playlists. The use of Playlist.com on Myspace was abolished after the new Myspace music was launched. Some of the classic features of Myspace music, such as the artist directory, were also abolished.[citation needed] In September 2010, Myspace continued to work on

improving the website. A photos section was added and the Fotoflexer app was added to photos. Myspace also enabled users to integrate their Myspace activity to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, to attract and show others that they are still on Myspace and to bring users back to Myspace. Myspace Movies was also added to promote movies and movie related media.
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Data Storage of Myspace

SAN DIEGOWhen MySpace.com quietly launched its online social networking service in September 2003, few could have predicted that in less than three years the tiny social company would explode into an Internet behemoth currently featuring 65 million users and running 4.5 million transactions per minute. Running parallel to MySpaces meteoric growth in terms of scale and data storage needs is its ascension to the rare pantheon of cultural phenomena. The site is adding 250,000 new users each day. Its a safe bet that someone in your family, group of friends or circle of coworkers has not only heard of MySpace but is likely an active user of the Web site. However, sustaining that type of unprecedented growth, while simultaneously enabling systems to endure the onslaught of members putting their audio, video and image files into MySpaces storage and database systems, requires careful forecasting. In fact, to hear Aber Whitcomb, chief technology officer of the Santa Monica, Calif., company discuss the subject at Storage Networking World here the week of April 3, his companys skyrocketing popularity and success can be directly attributed to making smart choices about IT infrastructure and inevitable capacity constraints, flexibility planning, and understanding precisely when
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it makes sense to move off a dependent technology that has outlived its usefulness. "The theme of our history is we max everything out. So we truly need a scalable architecture in order to handle that," Whitcomb said, adding that MySpace plans to be at 100 million users by January 2007. With a primary age demographic between ages 14-34, Whitcomb said, MySpace.coms user snapshot includes trendsetters, music and film buffs, and gamers, who have built their own massive online community. The MySpace Web site absorbs 1.5 million new images each day and has stored 430,000,000 million total images. MySpaces extensive IT architecture currently features 2,682 Web servers, 90 Cache servers with 16GB RAM, 450 Dart Servers, 60 database servers, 150 media processing servers, 1,000 disks in a SAN (storage area network) deployment, three data centers and 17,000MB per second of bandwidth throughput. In the earliest days of building the MySpace juggernaut, Whitcomb said, data accumulation and rapidly outpaced necessary the to storage
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capacity

servers

process

transactions, and, just as important, the software needed to make the entire operation less taxing on underlying hardware. In the beginning, MySpace.com featured a two-tiered architecture of a single database and load balanced Web servers. While that

configuration proved great for rapid development due to its lack of complexity and lower cost for fewer hardware components over multiple sites, it proved ineffective for higher traffic. At the 500,000-user mark, Whitcomb knew a change needed to be made. "We realized a single database wasnt going to cut it. We maxed out our database on the back end. The first thing you try to do is tune all your queries, split reads and writes across separate databases," and use transactional replication so multiple databases can service required reads, Whitcomb said. At 1 million users, MySpace embraced vertical partitioning, enabling different features for different sites. For instance, this included putting e-mail on a different server using transactional replication. However, that method didnt work for all workloads and data types. Once MySpace barreled past the 2 million-user mark, a bigger problem occurred: "[W]e were realizing we were having disk problems. We used SCSI arrays and [encountered] reliability and performance issues. We Whitcomb said. The decision to move data over to a SAN-oriented environment paid immediate dividends toward improving uptime, performance and redundancy, he said. It was then that MySpace shifted its database operations onto an EMC Clariion array.
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didnt have enough disk to handle I/O requirements,"

But in the bursting-at-the-seams data realm that is MySpace, soon vertical partitioning became a less attractive format for parsing data. So at 3 million users, MySpace rearchitected its database and turned to horizontal partitioning for its back end. The decision paid off, but Whitcomb admitted that horizontal partitioning is a difficult task to undertake while systems are in production. At 10 million users, MySpace realized it couldnt ascend greater data heights without scalable back-end storage. While the online company did have disks in its SAN assigned to certain databases, troublesome hot spots were created on those disks, and once the disks were maxed out there wasnt much else that could be done to recoup capacity. The answer: storage virtualization and high-performance block-level SAN access from 3PARData. "We decided wanted to go with storage virtualization to create a software layer in between disk and host; then you can create a stripe across all those disks and have each database take performance and eliminated hot spots across our architecture. We went with 3PAR for this," Whitcomb said. MySpaces fastest growing area, static content such as images, MP3s and videos, was examined at the 30 million-user mark by closely monitoring access and performance
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of that whole RAID group. This really, really helped us

and plotting rates versus demand, Whitcomb said. Another roadblock sprang up because traditional storage is not well suited for content and is not easily managed. MySpace currently sets aside about 100 terabytes for MP3s and videos, and another 200TB for dynamic content. MySpace started with SATA (Serial ATA) RAIDs with hosts attached to them, and would put as many individual files as possible on those servers. Unfortunately, this created islands of storage, and once the storage hardware is maxed out its very difficult to move data onto another box, Whitcomb said. "I would have engineers up all night. So we needed something different, we needed storage that truly scalesso we brought in Isilon." MySpace is deploying Isilon Systems software for MP3 and video streaming, clustering systems together in order to spread files and data across multiple storage nodes. The technology also reduces storage capacity constraints, since new nodes can be added as necessary. Originally starting off with a two-node 3PAR cluster. Each storage node delivers 600 megahertz per second, while each cluster spits out 10G bits per second. With plans to launch in multiple countries in the futureWhitcomb was in China last week to discuss how MySpace could coexist with that countrys
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frame, MySpace has since upgraded to an eight-node

strict online policiesthe ceiling is still sky-high for the companys growth and IT system expansion. Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis on enterprise and small business storage hardware and software. Modern redesigns In September 2012, a new redesign was announced (but no date given) making Myspace more visual and apparently optimized for tablets.[97] By May 2013 (presumably before), users have been able to transfer over to the new Myspace redesign.

Deleted game apps In 2013 Myspace moved all users to the New Myspace, removing access to the game apps section. Some game apps have moved to Facebook, or shut down. [98]

Criticism Main article: Criticisms of Myspace As with other social networking services, Myspace has met criticism on a range of issues, including online privacy, child safety, and censorship.
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Corporate information
International versions

Since early 2006, Myspace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g. UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People," and UK oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g. United States: "favorites", mm/dd/yyyy; dd/mm/yyyy). Myspace server infrastructure At QCon London 2008, Myspace Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino indicated that Myspace was sending 100 gigabits of data per second out to the Internet, of which 10 gigabits was HTML content and the remainder was media such as videos and pictures. The server infrastructure consists of over 4,500 web servers (running Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0, ASP.NET and .NET Framework 3.5), over 1,200 cache servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003), and over 500 database servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005) Gentoo Linux. As of 2009, Myspace has started migrating from HDD to SSD technology in some of their servers, resulting in space and power usage savings.
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the

rest

of

the

world:

"favourites",

as well as a custom distributed file system which runs on

Revenue model Myspace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its revenue model possesses no user-paid features. Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, Myspace is second only to Yahoo! in its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees. In November 2008, Myspace announced that user-uploaded content that infringed on copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary companies. Acquisition of Imeem On November 18, 2009, Imeem was acquired by Myspace Music for an undisclosed amount. After the acquisition was completed on December 8, 2009, it was confirmed that Myspace Music bought Imeem for less than US$1 million in cash. Myspace has also stated that they will be transitioning Myspace Music. On January 15, 2010, Myspace began restoring Imeem playlists. YouTube
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networks that

would would

be

redistributed revenue for

with the

advertisements

generate

Imeem's users, and migrating all their play lists over to

YouTube debuted in April 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on Myspace due to Myspace users' ability to embed YouTube videos in their Myspace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new Myspace Videos service, Myspace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. Myspace users widely protested the ban, prompting Myspace to lift the ban shortly thereafter. Since then YouTube has become one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[115] outgrowing MySpace's reach according to Alexa Internet.[116] In July 2006 several news organizations reported that YouTube had overtaken Myspace.[117] In a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin stated that: "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Flickr, whether it's Photobucket or any of the nextgeneration Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace. Given that most of their traffic comes from us if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them.
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Reference: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace

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