So if you have no idea what this whole myspace thing is all about, well sit back, fasten your seatbelt because your head is about to explode from knowledge!

First Things First:

MySpace and other sites can be dangerous when used incorrectly, but they can also have a lot of benefits.  Also, the reality is, more than likely your son or daughter will never get rid of the MySpace, facebook or other networking page, at least not without a fight and resentment.  So the best thing you can do as a parent, is be informed about these pages, how they work, their intended purposes and what you can do to keep your kids safe while using them.

The purpose:

According the MySpace "MySpace is for everyone" (unless you're under 14).  Also, according to their website MySpace is for people who want to talk to friends online, single people who want to meet other singles, people who want to find friends of friends, stay in touch with family and map your family tree, business people and co-workers interested in networking, keeping in touch with classmates and study partners, and people looking for long lost friends.  I would also add that it is a place to share videos, pictures and find new bands and new music.

Before we delve into the signup process, logging in and edit of profiles and home pages let's take a look at a couple pages.  Remember this is BEFORE we've logged into the site, so as far as MySpace is concerned we do not have an account.

First go to MySpace.com.  You'll notice there are some advertisements, a place to login, a showcase of new videos and a lot more internal and external links.  Let's start with looking at the section called "Cool New People."  This little box randomly displays 3 different people that have signed up with a new MySpace account recently.

Go ahead and click on one of the random profiles.  You might see one of 2 type of pages.  One will have the standard blue myspace header, the person's picture, a little info about them, a couple advertisements and a statement at the bottom that reads "This profile is set to private. This user must add you as a friend to see his/her profile."  This is wise of them.  This means that their profile cannot be viewed by anyone that is not logged in to a MySpace account that the person's profile you are trying to view has explicitly approved as a "friend". 

Otherwise, you might get a page where you can see their entire profile.  This page might be fairly clean (at least by MySpace standards) like this page I came across.

Or you might get a page like the one I came across HERE (let me know if this link is broken, the page's status could change at any time).  Again remember, we're not logged in at all at this point. 

I can see that this person used to produce reality television, but was fired and is clearly angry because they are cursing all over the page (I blurred out her profile picture for the more sensitive eyes).  I can also find out pretty quickly that this person is 27, Femail, single, bisexual, originally from Nottingham NH but currently lives in LA California, is a scorpio, smoke and drinks, is a college graduate who currently makes less than $30,000 per year and is a server (I'm guessing at a restaurant) and is a self-proclaimed "Truthseeker", "Digital Vigilante" and "Angry Rebel" amongst quite a few other things I could read about in her blog. 

Now to MySpace's credit, I cannot, at this point view any of this person's pictures.  I can, however, view their blog (more or less an online journal, for those of you who are unfamiliar) and view a list of their MySpace friends.

Do you feel more knowledgeable already?

Now that you have some idea of what MySpace is about, let's dig a little deeper and create an account.

What you will need:

A computer, an internet connection, a web browser (I'm guessing since you're reading this you have these), you will also need an email address.

Go to MySpace.com and click on "SignUp" on the top right of your screen.  You will enter personal information such as your name, location, age and gender.  Then you will be prompted to upload a photo.  This photo will be shown to the entire MySpace world.  Just like you saw the small picture when we were looking at other profiles.  When you complete this process MySpace will send you an email to confirm that you were actually the one who signed up.  The email will contain a link that you click to confirm. 

Now that you've confirmed your new account, let's do something with the account.  Go to MySpace.com, go to the "Member Login" box and type in your username and password that you created.  When you click "Login" you will be taken to a page that is your personal administrative page.  No one but you can see this page.

The Admin Page:

Starting at the top left of your page it will say "Hello, <yourname>."  Just below that there is a bax that says "Pick Your MySpace URL! Click Here."  Here you can choose where your personal page will be located (www.myspace.com/<whateveryouwant>).  Continuing down the page, you will see the picture you uploaded, or if you didn't upload one before you can upload one now.  Moving down to the "Control Panel" is the beginnings of the meat of your profile page.  You can see your inbox where messages from other users are kept.  When you click "settings" you can manage all kinds of things from changing your password to notifications and, what we'll focus on for a moment, your privacy settings.  Now, these settings aren't set up very well, so stick with me here and I'll show you a couple settings that will be most beneficial in keeping your kid safe on the site (although you should probably take the time to look through all the settings and decide for yourself what's important). 

Click on "Privacy".  My recommendation is to not show online statue, don't show your birthday, profile viewable by "My friends only", and don't allow photos to be shared/emailed.  Then click "Save All Changes."

Next click on "Spam".  My recommendation is to not allow non-friends to send messages, definitely require last name or email address (this will force anyone to enter your last name or your email address before they can request to be your friend), require approval for comments to be posted, only friends can add comments to blog, allow only friends for group and event invites, and disallow anyone to send IM invitations.  The CAPTCHA settings are up to you, all this setting will do is prevent spam bots from sending messages and leaving comments, which probably wouldn't be a problem anyways with the settings we have.  Finally click "Save all Changes."

DISCLAIMER:  These settings are only a starting point.  We are not responsible for occurrences  that happen in your family's experience. 

So back to your home page (which you can return to by clicking "Home" near the top left of the page).  There are a lot of other things that you can do on MySpace from blogs forums, chat, calendar and news to games, videos, music and weather, and I would recommend surfing around and seeing some of those things for yourself.  We'll just concentrate on a couple more areas. 

Friends:
In the center column at the bottom there is a section called "Friend Space."  You will notice at the moment you will have one friend: Tom.  Tom is the creator of MySpace (who is extraordinarily rich by now I'm sure) and is everyone's friend by default.  As you add friends they will also appear in this box.  We should probably take a minute to discuss the term "friend" as it applies to MySpace.  "Friend" in this case is a loose term.  These can be actual friends, just people you know, people you've never met or even bands or other musical groups or artists (some movie websites are hosted on MySpace now too). 

To add friends we go back up to the top left of the page and find "Search" which is 2 links to the right of the "Home" link we used earlier.  You will then be take to a page where you can find a specific person in the "Find a Friend" section, either by their real name (full name), the title of their page (display name) or by their email address.  Fill in the search criteria, click "Find" and it will return results from your search.  You can also find people from a school, namely a high school or a college and search through the results for people that you know.  You can also search and find people you don't know by common personal or career interests. 

Music:
The last section we'll talk about in this tutorial is the reason that I signed up for MySpace in the first place: music.  Back to the top of the page in the bar of links where the "Home" link is, towards the right side there is a link called "Music", go ahead and click it.  Now we are in the music section.  You will notice there are some featured artists on this page.  You can either click on one of these or search for an artist of your personal preference.  On an artist page you can find out some information about the artist such as location, musical influences, what record label they are signed to if any and a schedule of upcoming tour dates, locations and times.  You can also see pictures of the band, watch videos that might be on their page, and listen to their music in the media center (you can download .mp3s of their music if the artist allows it). 

MySpace terms and conditions
MySpace privacy policy
Wiredsafety.org a site about safety on these types of sites
MSNBC article about MySpace