Danah boyd has written a really great essay about myspace.com called: Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad? I saw someone say that page views on myspace.com gets close to half that of google.com. Thats amazing! particularly for a social networking site.

If you, like me, haven’t really been paying attention to the myspace phenomenon this essay will be a real eye opener. I found this excerpt particularly significant

MySpace is in a different position, one far more harrowing. MySpace has grown so large that the needs, values and practices of its users are slamming into each other. It’s facing the archetypical clashing of cultures. Yet, interestingly, most users are not that concerned - they’re trying to figure out how to live in this super public. The challenge is that outsiders are panicking about a culture that they are not a part of. They want to kill the super public rather than support people in learning how to negotiate it. No one knows how to live in such a super public, but this structure is going to become increasingly a part of our lives. It is no wonder that youth want to figure it out. And it is critical that they do, especially since our physical worlds have become more segregated and walled off, partitioned by age, race, class, religion, values, etc. Yet, it is the older generation that did that segregating and they’re not really ready to face collapsed contexts at every turn or to learn how to engage with people who have very different values on a daily basis. Because of their position of power, outsiders are pushing the big red emergency button, screaming danger and creating a complete and utter moral panic. Welcome to a generational divide, where adults are unable to see the practices of their children on kids’ terms.

via Many-to-Many