MySpace: Socializing on the Web

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If Google, MapQuest, CraigsList, and eBay are the web addresses we visit to find information and engage in e-commerce, then MySpace is the cyber-place where people socialize and share intimate moments of their diaries. The wildly popular social-networking site where young people flirt, share music and poetry, and "make friends" was visited by 37 million last month alone, and some 170,000 new members sign up each day. This two year-old virtual city was invented by DeWolfe and Tom Anderson on a shoestring budget. Today, its 70 million users visit the site for free while its owner, Rupert Murdoch earned $40 million in advertising revenue in 2005 and is predicted to triple that number this year. Guest host Diana Nyad explores this new-age hot spot(An extended version of this segment aired earlier today on To the Point.)Making News: LAPD to Benefit by Higher Trash-Collection Fees The city's budget it tight, but Mayor Villaraigosa wants to fulfill his promise to expand the Los Angeles Police Department. The proposed solution to achieve that expansion is to raise trash-collection fees. LA City Councilman Eric Garcetti says the graduated tax plan will help ease the financial impact on taxpayers while keeping pace with a realistic LAPD hiring policy.
Guest host Diana Nyad, 2002 inductee into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, is a business sports columnist for Marketplace, senior sports correspondent for Fox News, and has hosted her own show on CNBC. She's also the author of three books.

MySpace

MySpace Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, Forbes' Q&A; with

Pew Internet & American Life Project, 'Life Online: Teens and Technology and the Life to Come'

Dana Boyd's publications

Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School

Folksonomy

Verini's Vanity Fair article on MySpace

MacLaren's LA Youth article on MySpace and the law

Credits

Host:

Warren Olney

Producer:

Frances Anderton