MySpace was created in July 2003 and it has improved a lot since, but as
Encyclopedia Dramtica points out, it's "it's a lethargically coded piece of shit" . New features are regularly added to allow users to customize their profiles more freely and to improve the general running of the site. Though, some complain that the design of the pages is quite poor and that downtimes and slower running are too frequent.
A major upgrade was released at the end of September 2003. Many bugs were fixed along with the introduction of features like group profiles, the ability to empty the trash in the mailbox, a new look for the bulletin board, a mail indicator live anywhere on the system, unlimited friends and the option to change an email and turn of reminders.
In October 2003, people were allowed to leave comments on friends’ profile pictures. They could also hide online status, block friends’ requests and approve comments before they get posted. In November, Classifieds appeared along with picture ranking and the ability to search users by interest. That’s also when the users started to experiment with HTML to customize their profiles, more stylish pages attracted greater interest.
In December 2003, the IM, Instant Messenger, was released for one-on-one communication between users. Chat Rooms were officially created early 2004 but some users had already set up and marketed ‘unofficial’ ones. A large part of the revenue generated on MySpace comes from promotional partnerships or sponsorships.
MySpace Music was introduced in 2004, allowing artists to create their profiles and uploading MP3 streams of their songs to expose their music to a large audience and grow their fanbases. Later in the year, many bands were able to use the new “event invite” feature to invite these fans to gigs. “Event invites” can also be used for other purposes.
In early April games such as the popular Gold Miner were released. Among other new features, were also forums and journal customization. Groups appeared in June 2004, allowing members with common interests to get together. People can join themselves or be invited by the moderator of the group. There is a specific ‘Groups’ section which can be browsed to discover all the groups which already exist. Journals were renamed blogs in the autumn of 2004. They now included a feature which allowed users to rate their friends, the “kudos”.
Alarming rumors of a possible shutdown of the website circulated at the end of 2004, which was settled by a general mail sent by Tom assuring that saying "MySpace is not shutting down, and it will never shut down".
A very useful feature was introduced in January 2005, enabling MySpace members to check if their AOL, Yahoo! or MSN friends were also on MySpace.
MySpace members’ schools feature automatically creates a homepage for every school or college which are entered into the systems by members when filling in their details. It makes it very easy for alumni or students to find classmates on MySpace. This service also offers members a classified space for members to post ads for textbooks, shared accommodation, and others. Every registered school also has its own MySpace forum.
An innovative feature, the “pin”, was implemented in forums in February 2005. Basically when a moderator pins a thread, it is maintained at the top of the forum until it is unpinned so that the main focus is on this specific topic as long as the moderator wishes.
In March 2005, members were offered the option to customize their urls. They could replace the ID number by the name they want thus making their page accessible through the address “www.myspace.com/NAME”.
The media group News Corporation owned by Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace in September 2005 for 580 Million Dollars.
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