Judith Donath, Barry Wellman, and Designs for Living Online as a Networked Individual

OLD vs NEW Myspace
The Myspace as I remember it in the past is what I will refer to as OLD Myspace, and Myspace as it currently lives, updated for the music industry, is what I call NEW Myspace.

OLD Myspace
The platform was built for people to be in contact with one another through the ability to "connect" with one another's profiles. This allowed users to see the content that they were approved to see, comment on anothers' page, see photos, blogs, and other provided widgets on the pages. The purpose of the site was to connect people. This is one of the first sites that I had the ability to use to be on my way to becoming a Networked Individual (Barry Wellman). It allows users to be their own person and connect accordingly. This is similar to LinkedIn's profile and connection feature today (but less advanced, of course).

Each user could customize their profile as they liked using HTML elements, backgrounds, images, and JavaScript widgets. This allowed people the freedom to express themselves through their profile. It could also be seen as a burden to the people who were not as tech-savvy, but Myspace allowed for that with the ability to choose a background color or plain site.

Above are examples of a plain Myspace site and one with a "layout" that was chosen and embedded using HTML under the Customize feature.

This allowed a user to show their personality through their profile more than just writing something about themselves. It also showed a person's tastes in colors, patterns, or favorite things without a viewer having to read about the person in their biography.

I found this decorating portion to be fun, and Judith Donath would have loved what it allowed users to express in the way they decorated their profile. It is a users' own personal space to do what they like with it. This is something most social media sites haven't brought back. You have to attain some sort of blog to have this kind of customization today (Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, etc.).

NEW Myspace
Myspace still has the user profile feature on the platform, but there is now less interaction available on the profile, and more interaction on an overall-site scale. Myspace has now incorporated a system to allow users to view popular music or music videos that are viewed through the site (similar to a News Feed), and it has remove the option for users to incorporate HTML or JavaScript additions to their personal pages.

The blogs were also removed from the site, making it now a more media-focused platform. The shift from people being the important focus to music and media being the main focus is very obvious when viewing the site.

This is an example of a "new" Myspace profile. There is no ability to post comments, but you can now chat or message them, and you can still see videos or photos from the main profile. Doesn't this look a little bit like some other Social Media site we know?

Judith Donath would be shocked by all the changes made to this site to restrict user customization and the ability for users to express themselves over the platform. However, I feel that Myspace has done a good job shifting to the concept that they feel is most important: being media-centered.