MySpace

From GrassrootsPedia

MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos. MySpace also features an internal search engine and an internal e-mail system. The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites. The site reportedly has more than 100 million user accounts and attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day.

An increasing number of nonprofit and political organizations are using MySpace to advocate for their cause, particularly among the large volume of young people using the tool. To join MySpace, organizations create "profile pages". An organization profile usually has basic information about the group along with links to more detailed content, usually on the group's own website. You can generally also host videos and pictures as well as start a blog through your organization's profile.

MySpace connects you with supporters by allowing them to become your "friends," which means that a link to their profile shows up on your profile and vice versa. Thus, your name and your organization’s image (your logo, or something more compelling) will appear on pages throughout the site if you build up enough friends.

To get friends, you can contact people directly who are already friends with other profiles in your interest area (for instance, other environmental groups if you're an environmental group), and you'll also pick up friend requests from people who stumble across you on your friends' profiles. You may want to promote your issues to your friend list regularly through bulletins (mass messages) and asking friends to post your alerts on their profiles. If your organization has an email activist list or email newsletter, you can build up a nucleus of supporters quickly if you ask your list to become your friends, since many of them will already be on the more popular networking sites.