Case Study 8 - Blog

MySpace: Open With A Joke

Myspace is an internet site where audiences can create and customise their own, personal webpage. They can leave blogs on their site, upload pictures or videos, add music to their page and fill in an ‘about me’ section for their friends to view. By making friends online, you can leave comments and messages on your friends’ pages, establishing an online community or network of friends.

This site has been created by five friends Sam V, Sam J, Kamil, Martyn and Jobby, who are using their ‘space’ to promote their indie band ‘Open With A Joke’.

On the page:

• Top left of page: Title of band (‘Open With A Joke), location (London), Profile Views (7440) and a picture.


• Pictures: If you click on their pictures you can see a whole album of photos of them These consist of individual photos of the band members, the band as a whole, the band playing a gig, and friends of the band. All of the photos have comments left by their network of friends, such as under this photo of all the boys at a fancy dress party:

• About the band:
• Friends: To the left of the page there is a ‘friends’ section where they’ve left their top 12 friends, and if you click on the link you can see their other 509 friends. These are all links so you could visit other people’s spaces, creating the real sense of a network of friends.
  
• Videos: OWAJ have linked on their space 3 videos from the site http://www.youtube.com/. One is their music video to ‘I don’t see the attraction’ showing them and their Lego alter egos, one is of them playing live as Jobby takes off his jumper to reveal his wife-beater t-shirt and one is of a bear falling out of a tree onto a trampoline.
  
• Comments: The rest of the page has been taken up with their friends’ comments (they have 520 in total).
  
  This site shows how easy it is to create an online community, and how successful personalisation is; more people use MySpace than any other blogging sites, as they can create a page completely unique to them. There is a great crossover of media forms on this site alone; the internet, photography, video and music.
  
  For the industry, MySpace is a great way of promoting, especially new bands. Artists such as Lilly Allen or The Arctic Monkeys were recognised through MySpace, and have a huge online following.