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Youths No Longer Predominant on MySpace
mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press is reporting on the rapid aging of MySpace. More than half of MySpace's users are now 35 or older. From the article: 'Just a year ago, teens under 18 made up about 25 percent of MySpace, the popular online hangout run by News Corp. That's now down to 12 percent in the comScore analysis released Thursday. By contrast, the 35-54 group at MySpace grew to 41 percent in August, from 32 percent a year earlier ... The study was based on comScore's regular panels for measuring Internet audiences, rather than MySpace's registration information, where users often lie about their age.'"
More predators, less victims.
Thus proving:
Myspace: For 14 year old girls and the 40 year old men that love them
(don't know where i heard this , so i don't take credit)
My daughter actually told me that mySpace is for "old people and loosers" I guess they have all moved on to a new site that is more of the same but fits this weeks definition of cool and edgy. Nothing new here, remember being in college when it was cool to like a band until other people did...then they were sell outs regardless of whether the music changed or not.
Between that and movies (myspace.com/moviename), it's pretty amazing to see how that service has become mainstreamed and co-opted by the adult/business world.
The CB App. What's your 20?
It used to be that you had to say you were under 16 to make your page private. Now that you can control that separately, many people no longer need to pretend to be 14.
So, let me see if I understand the way this thread is running:
Kid's hanging out of MySpace are just being kids, but middle aged adults are predetors and/or lying about their age? is that about right?
What is this, the modern interpretation of "never trust anyone over 30 years old"? Some us "old timers" still enjoy meeting new people from time to time.
When I initially saw the article I thought, "cool, people my age, maybe I'll set up an account". This thread has been kinda depressing.
Maybe....just maybe...the notion of networking with people across the internet is becoming a more mainstream idea. This is kind of reminiscent of an old gopher site called "occ" which I used to use for job hunting. Nowadays, it's a web site called "Monster", and one of serveral such sites. Like many others, I maintain an online resume as a matter of course.
It could be that social networking sites are evolving to the same level.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Huh? Excuse me? Since where did 35+ become synonimous with paedophile?
It may be hard to comprehend for someone whose world revolves around a computer in a basement, but most humans are _social_ beings. Yes, I know, mind boggles. There are plenty of reasons for people, even aged 35+, to interact with other people in a real or virtual community, that _don't_ involve looking for 13 year olds to fuck. Like, you know, interacting with other 35+ people.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Supposedly, this company has some method of telling the age of a person based on their MySpace profile. I'm guessing it involves voodoo.
Or maybe they just assume that everyone who likes Norwegian black metal is 14 years old, everyone who likes Neil Diamond is 57, and everyone else is 39.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Well, I think its quite possible that the raw uglyness of Myspace pages caught up with people.
I think I've been to myspace maybe half a dozen times in total. I find the layout of most pages visually offensive. Useless sensory overload.
Teens look for a community of their own. They find one, build it, make it good, then the corporations move in to make money off of it. That lasts for a while, then the corporations eventually destroy it. Good example: Rap. I could come up with more.
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I agree with the parent, but the idea of MySpace being a tool and not just the latest teen social fad goes much bigger than just being a band advertisement. Now we are seeing movies and TV shows using MySpace for marketing purposes as well. And these are not independent movies or public access shows either, these are Hollywood blockbusters and network television shows. Now I don't have a MySpace account and I am not familiar with their usage agreement (if there is one), but if I understand this correctly, these movies, bands, tv shows all have FREE webspace that is practically pre-designed (so very little effort goes into the creation) and they have a vast network of people to advertise to and also measure things like buzz and hype associated with the product. How soon until we start seeing other consumer products with their own MySpace pages? Anyone else want to be Microsoft Windows Vista's "friend"?
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Tom had no comment other than to say that he's your friend.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
This can only mean one thing: MySpace users are aging at a faster rate than the rest of us.
We should look into this. Is there something about ugly HTML that increases the human rate of aging? This really demands further study.
Read my blog.
I'll give you a damn good reason to be on a virtual community (e.g., you're on Slashdot right now) instead of striking a conversation with your good neighbour Jack Random: common interests. E.g., I'd rather talk or read a post about computers, history, or cats, than listen to the local drone go on and on about football (soccer) and cars.
Frankly, most conversations born out of sheer geographical proximity are fucking boring. There's a whole class of topics that really interest noone that much, like sports or the weather, that exist only as the lowest common denominator for talks between perfect strangers. ("Say, it's cloudy today." Yes, I noticed it, I'm not fucking blind.)
And people who devote a disproportionate amount of their time just to stay on top of such common denominator topics. E.g., sports. There are plenty of people whose only real interest in sports and in following the prowess of a give team, whether they consciously realize it or not, is only really to seem to belong to the local group of Tom, Dick and Harry who seem interested in that team. Bonus points if it's just groupthink, and deep down inside, Tom, Dick and Harry aren't in it for any other reason either.
Me, I'd rather find someone and some topic more interesting than that. On the Internet if that's what it takes.
I'll give you a second one: to stay in touch with old pals. People occasionally do have to move.
Plus, it's not even something new, and you only need to look at history to see how bogus that argument is. The same could be said for snail mail letters, for example. Here, lemme rephrase it for you: "Also, there are few reason for these letters. The whole point of them is to meet people you will never actually meet. Want some social interaction. Try striking up a conversation with somebody, that alwasy seesm to work well for me."
And yet, ever since someone inventing writing on a stone or clay tablet, people have used them to communicate with other people, some they'll likely never meet in person. All sorts of people, including philosophers, novelists, playwrights, statesmen, etc, yes, have often enough preferred to spend an evening writing a letter to an old friend or to someone with similar interests, instead of just going out and striking a random conversation about the weather. For the most famous ones you can even go to the local book store or library and buy a a book or three with transcripts of their correspondence. Those alone would make a nice mountain of evidence that people occasionally do want to socialize with someone more interesting than the locally available Joe and Jane Random. Go figure.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I guess I'm one of them. I put up a MySpace page a few months ago, trying to locate people for planning a 20th high school reunion. I've actually found more of my classmates at MySpace than at any other site on the 'net.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
..think of the adults!!
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I'm pretty sure the large number of teanie boppers that register as 99 years old to avoid stalkers, creeps, and weirdos may have thrown the statistics off just a little bit.
Remember, girls, if you try to project a highly sexual image to the world, that only teenaged boys will look and be interested. Anybody over 20 who's attention you catch is a "stalker, creep, and weirdo".
This idea's pretty weird, yet millions of kids seem to believe it ...
...isn't cool anymore? Just because I'm a 40+ year old white guy who raps an obscene, extended version of "The Ballad of the Beverly Hillbillies" explaining in detail the relationship between Ellie Mae and all those animals and thinks I'm being funny while I do it, we've reached the point where rap isn't cool?
Damn it all to hell.
I worked hard on that song. A couple of drunk crowds at comedy clubs have loved at it. I guess now I'll have to ditch it from the act.
Damn.
Except in this case there is nothing about MySpace that says "kids only site". We're not talking about adults on some kindergarten's "I like ponies" chatroom (though even there they might have legitimate reasons to be, like making sure what their own kid could see there), we're talking about adults on a site that always had adult profiles too. It was never marketted as a teen-only site, it never had any mention of being a teen-only site, etc. So exactly _what_ warning signs would an adult have to tell them "it's a kid only place, they'll look funny at you if you go there"?
All you have there is some "omg, there are pedos on MySpace" media scare (and even there it's been only a couple of cases), and from there a bunch of people basically seem to extrapolate that everyone else there must be one. Which is a classic extrapolation fallacy, of the kind that goes "cats are mammals, hence all mammals are cats."
Or to put it otherwise, it's as illogical as reading that there was a rape in the central park, and from there assuming that every single male in the central park must be a rapist looking for a victim. Or that there are fraudsters on Ebay, hence everyone using Ebay must be looking for someone to scam. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.