MUCH OF MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE is virtual, existing online via networks. I accord the virtual world the same importance in my life as the material world; and increasingly, so do many others. Thus I thought I'd share with you my impressions of MySpace, the giant online community. (This essay was first published on the mailing list of the LA men's professional group, METal, Media-Entertainment-Technology Alliance.) My conclusion: MySpace broke new ground enrolling so many users to its services, but its unexpected success is mainly the result of unplanned viral marketing. The MySpace experience itself is unsatisfying. MySpace's 85 million users deserve better and someone needs to give it to them -- in a totally different format, in smaller online communities based on real bonds of interest and avocation, not just the thrill of unrequited love. -- Bob

IS RUPERT MURDOCK THE WORLD'S CANNIEST BUSINESSMAN because his News Corp. paid merely $580 million for the social-network-based online community, MySpace, or did he buy a pig in a poke, and a skinny one at that? This question is important, because MySpace frequently is held forth as the paragon of social-network-based online communities, a model for similar future endeavors. My conclusion: unless it has secret reformation plans for MySpace that are sweeping and successful, News Corp. paid a lot for a little.

I've been “social networking” since 1975 when, at USC, I first played Asteroids on the ARPANET against UCLA's Computer Science Department and Cal-Tech's Army of Nerds. I later got involved with BBSs (setting up the nation's first legislative BBS in the State Capitol), The WELL, USENET, and online communities on the Web. Because two of my current clients are in the social-networking business, I decided to join the youth-oriented MySpace, despite my advanced age (57, see below). I wanted to find out for myself, through actual experience, what all the noise and fury was about.

Some context. MySpace was created by a couple film students at UCLA as a way of getting in touch with their friends for networking; dating; and sharing writing, new music and video, and news about social events. Through word of mouth and online messaging, it became popular among the youth crowd, growing like Topsy. It now numbers (according to MySpace) nearly 86 million users. In dollar terms, when News Corp. bought MySpace, then serving 84 million users, Rupert paid about $7 for each user. Since users pay nothing for the service, this is charity until such time as MySpace starts valorizing its purchase through service fees, advertising, or some other arrangement.

MySpace is almost a mirror image of FriendFinder, an old (by Internet time) and highly profitable match-making service owned by the mysterious Palo Alto-based Various, Inc. To the FF framework, MySpace has added various other functions -- like sharing audios and videos -- thrown in for good measure (and I mean, thrown). I'm surprised that the highly litigious Various, which has a history of suing to protect its properties, hasn't taken action against MySpace. My guess is that Various hasn't done a good job of protecting the specific features and functions that constitute FriendFinder -- providing users with profiles, matching on profiles, making Friends, communicating via internal IMs, forming Groups, and so forth -- and that MySpace merely reverse-engineered the lot. Maybe Various will take action now that MySpace is part of a deep-pockets organization. Or maybe it will avoid a bruising encounter with News Corp. in hopes of doing some sort of future deal. These are just my hunches.

About a week ago, I browsed over to MySpace and registered -- a simple process obviously susceptible to spammers and imposters -- and was provided with a Profile. A Profile is a personal user home page on which you compose your display page. On the display page is shown a required photograph (a separate page is provided for additional photos, although you can also incorporate personal photos in the customizable page design) and personal information regarding lifestyle, appearance, interests, and activities. This data is collected via questionnaires, some with standard answers and others that invite essays in response. You can also display pictures of your Friends and their comments to you (usually banal and frequently suggestive, one step short of prohibited profanity). Friends are other users who accept invitations you send out asking them to become Friends. Friends, it turns out, are easy to come by, even from famous individuals, because they obligate no one to anything and are a way of extending networks within MySpace that can be used for commercial announcements, previews of musical and video releases, and so forth. MySpace policy prohibits display of commercial information, but enforcement appears lax and would in fact eliminate one of the sine qua non enticements that contributes to MySpace's huge claimed population.

Other things you can do on MySpace include email and instant messaging to other MySpace users, calendaring of events, bulletin announcements to Friends, joining user-created Groups on thousands of topics, and blog on anything you like. I've observed that the Groups display a long-tail configuration (not surprising), with a very few Groups in each category comprising large numbers of users and most relatively few. Also, email messages and even more, IMs sent among users tend to be chatty, cursory and not very informative. Maybe this is less true of users who have forged long-term relationships, but I also observed in the short time I've been on that there is a mighty churn within MySpace. Ardent use falls off after one has accumulated dozens or hundreds of Friends and discovers that this doesn't produce the desired result, dozens or hundreds of emails or other acknowledgements. In fact, the exchanges tend to be brief and shallow.

I'd heard a lot about how MySpace users customize their pages, and that this was a big factor in acquiring younger users as well as publicizing music, videos, events, etc. Customization is simple using freely downloadable code provided by many vendors (who also offer other simple tools for MySpace users, including packaged questionnaires for incorporation in a Profile). One look at a fairly large, subjective sample of Profiles convinced me that customization, while fun, isn't MySpace's best feature. The customized Profiles I encountered ran from the cute to the complicated to the incomplete -- but honestly, most were ugly, illegible, or superfluous, distracting from the content (which also was mostly trivial). I tried to use the Networking tool to connect with other professionals in Internet consulting, marketing and design, and movie production/screenwriting. My efforts were unproductive. The search mechanism is too primitive to provide precise results and besides, any user can qualify for inclusion in any category. You'd be surprised how many Lap Dancers there are on MySpace, not to mention Musicians. Most of the Profiles I saw featured photo pages of people doing average things, parties and such. Many of the users, to get dates, enhance their self-esteem, or get dates, provide pictures of themselves scantily attired: I never saw so many bikini and lingerie portraits of women. To be fair, some Profiles are classy productions, but notable precisely because they are classy -- and rew.

The age distribution of users on MySpace in absolute terms is diverse, as you might expect of any global system with 86 million degrees of freedom. Conceivably, you can find someone fitting any combination of age, gender, preferences, geography, and professional affiliation -- but in fact, most of the users I encountered in my searches turned out to be in the 18-35 age range. A substantial number are younger than that (avoided by the others because of their age); but proportionally, few are older. This may account for the limited knowledge, questionable literacy, and conformity that characterizes MySpace exchanges, most of which revolve in one way or another around sex, drugs, and rock and roll; also, art, trendy philosophy, and the afore mentioned bikini photos and videos. Among MySpace members in our neighborhood, a lot of the exchange centers on getting gigs in show biz as musicians, producers, models, and other high-glamor jobs. It felt as if 95% of it was fantasy and personal ambitions unrealized, although a fair number of the local Profiles feature individuals who work in the industry. I'm stunned by how many display their salaries as “$250,000 or more.” (Displaying your salary is an option. Who in their right mind earning such an income would so lamely alert the IRS?)

By the time my first week on MySpace had ended, I'd amassed about 36 Friends (including the adult film star Nina Hartley, whom I admire for her literacy, pioneering lifestyle, safe but liberal sex advocacy, and early demonstration that even adult film stars can control their own careers). Tom Anderson, one of the UCLA film students who created MySpace, is the mandatory first Friend of every user (though you can discard if you like: having an exchange with Tom or any identifiable individual responsible for MySpace's operations is a virtual impossibility). I didn't get me much email from my Friends, however, except usually for a first, cordial hello. I did make a local Friend who shares many professional interests in computer graphics. She invited me to accompany her and a friend to see Sergio Mendes at the Hollywood Bowl, which I appreciated. We even made plans to meet in person, over green tea.

Whether my new friend and I will actually meet is problematic, because one week into my MySpace experience, my graphically correct, literate, and even provocative Profile -- with daily blog entries -- was deleted. I don't know the reason why. I've asked MySpace, through the typical Customer Support form, to investigate. The only thing I did that could have prompted such a draconian act was to post a bulletin announcing this weekend's Santa Monica Main Street SOULstice Festival. In some Broadband Defender's addled estimation, this may have constituted breaking the prohibition against commercial announcements, but the Festival is a community event. Its many “commercial” sponsors include pet shops, an FM station, a local bank, and such other small-time operators as traditionally help community events offset their inevitable losses. Oh yeah, there's also a Sidewalk Sale happening. Whatever the reason, I'm very disappointed that my Profile vanished overnight without any warning from MySpace.

This brings up a technical issue. Maybe my Profile disappeared because of a bug in the system. MySpace is always reporting maintenance outages of various subsystems. Whenever you invoke an operation, a wide variety of URLs display on your browser's status bar as information is shuttled around what must be history's most kludged network of servers. Often these servers (like YouTube, which many users employ as an archive for linking content to MySpace Profiles) aren't even a part of MySpace. Quality control is abysmal. Undoubtedly News Corp. is sinking millions into improving service and security; but ultimately, if MySpace is going to operate, let alone scale, with any degree of reliability, the entire infrastructure needs replacement.

So now to the big question: how is News Corp. going to make any revenues from MySpace, recoup its investment of $600 million in a reasonable time, or realize profits? Already there are click-through referrals to other vendors (like Amazon.com) and you can sense the ghosts of advertising hovering. But even the best-designed social-network-based online communities have difficulty targeting their users as advertisers require. And MySpace is hardly among the best-designed: we're talking about a technical operation held together by chewing gum and an heterogeneous population of users in widely separated geographies, cultures, and subcultures from around the world, whose self-identification and personal information (collected via the Profiles) are questionable and, in many cases, downright fraudulent.

Yes, yes, it's been argued that MySpace is News Corp.'s best effort to gain some ground in the race to go online that almost left it behind for good. And also, that anything that gives you access to almost 90 million users is brilliant, even if 75 or 80 million of them don't actively participate. This logic is specious. For a lot less money, you can buy a smaller but more focused, more active, and lucrative online community. (My partner belongs to All Nurses, a simple but functional and active forum that claims tens of thousands of nurses as members. Unless I'm selling iPods, Nikes, or musical recordings in a decidedly youth-oriented genre, that's where I'd put my money.

In conclusion, from my experience, MySpace provides the proof, taken to the extreme, that vertically organized online communities are more useful and profitable than the horizontally organized mass online communities promoted collectively as “Web 2.0.” Imagine if those 90 million were divvied up and populated online communities that were composed of qualified members, well segmented. That's what I'm talking about.

I'm only a sample of one, however. Others may have had more edifying experiences. If so, I'd like to hear about them. I republished my MySpace Profile, recreated from scratch, this evening. If there's any way to do it better, I'd like to know it. So would my clients. Your comments, as always, are welcome.