Graywolf on MySpace
April 10th, 2006 by Michael Gray in SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Ok I get that MySpace is important and I know all the cool kids are talking about it, but I don’t get it. Yahoo 360 is much more functional, I guess it’s just … well … dorky, so mad crazy emo kidz don’t use it because it doesn’t annoy the ‘rents. I’ve been wandering around myspace for the past few days and can’t find anything that’s even slightly interesting.
Please someone show me something worth while. White hat, black hat, no hat, or even cat in the hat, I don’t care, drop it in the comments or drop me an email.
Here if you want add me as your MySpace friend go fer’ it, Graywolf.
Sphere It
April 10th, 2006 at 7:15 am
you mean the provactive photos of girls isnt interesting enough? myspace is sort of the ‘livejournal’ crowd gone mainstream.
i played with all the networking sites when they first came out, friendster, myspace, orkut etc, but personally i wont use them. they put me into a self-conscious megalomanic psychosis.
also myspace is run by the CIA so that they can identify the terrorist networks of the future.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:35 am
If you want to get a date its pretty useful, but Mrs. Gray might be a little peeved.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:50 am
Well with the picture I chose I don’t think I will have to worry about becoming a babe magnet
April 10th, 2006 at 8:29 am
i hear ya. i don’t get it either. a bunch of annoying, ugly pages. as cool as i like to imagine myself, i think it’s a generational gap thing.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Michael has 0 friends.
That is just so sad
–
But seriously, I went to a public meeting sponsored by the FBI at one of our local middle schools last week, about kids and Internet safety. Of course, most of the information given was geared toward the typical techno-challenged parent (explaining why you need to lock down your wireless access point wouldn’t surprise anyone here), but I have to say I learned something - parents need to be on MySpace. And it’s not just for your own kids – it’s because you need to know what your child’s friends are doing, too.
This FBI agent went through some searches she had done on MySpace, and the information that these middle school kids were leaving about themselves was absolutely jaw-dropping. My wife and I, completely confident in our knowledge that our daughter wouldn’t do that, were floored when the agent says ‘Now, before you think that your child wouldn’t do this, remember that your child might be friends with this person, and that any predator looking at this information can get access to your kids through them…’
We came home and immediately started doing searches on MySpace for our daughter’s friends….
April 10th, 2006 at 10:09 am
I know I must be like the only person who has 0 friends
Yea I’m with you Greg butt ugly pages and I have no idea what you’re supposed to do when you get there, so I think you’re right about a generational gap. From a marketing perspective though I really want to try and get inside of what it’s about, what makes it tick, and eventually how I can use that knowledge.
April 10th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I don’t really get it either, but FWIW after only a couple weeks my profile did show up as a G backlink.
It might be a smart idea for anyone protecting a brand to sign up and get the url myspace.com/brandname. The myspace user pages do show up well for a “username” search.
April 10th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Dude, you 5|_|>
April 10th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
where’s my secret decoder ring …
April 10th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
added as a friend
I see you’ve already joined my little group?
April 10th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Yep, been meaning to try it for a while, you just gave me the kick I needed to do it.
April 10th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
I avoided MySpace as long as I could… but since I joined a month ago, I have gotten back in touch with many of my high school and college friends that I normally wouldn’t be in contact with… it seems like a lot of people are giving in!
April 10th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Ha - That picture of you had me in stickes.
Is that how you’ll dress for Boston?
hehe…killer…
maybe we’re too old to understand…or are too geeky for this…I’ve been waiting to hear from you on ways to make $ in myspace….still waiting
April 10th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
I’ve go special t-shirt planned for the first day in Boston. Yeah I’m going to have to get to work on my space I have a few ideas just rying to get a lay of the land first.
April 10th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
!. I saw that you signed up for my MySpace blog this weekend GW - thanks. 2. When I see all of these posts about MySpace being a young /generational thing, I think - “God you all must be really old” - but since I’m 32 I know it can’t be that. Like any tool, MySpace is what you make it. All the people who are my “friends” are in my age group, I’ve never encountered a teen page (because I’m not looking) and I’ve gotten work through “friends”… so please stay off of MySpace - lol
April 10th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Natasha are you doing any sort of marketing, for products, brands, or traffic on MySpace? If you are I’d love to read more about it. If you decide to follow up drop me a note and I’ll help spread the word.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
And so the point is…. you sign up for an account and sit back and wait for something to happen. I signed up for an account back in November, big deal, what do you do with it?
My username doesnt even appear in the search results of myspace. As of yet nothing has happened, so what’s the point of joining? What do you do with it?
April 10th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
[...] Graywolf and others try to figure out the myspace puzzle which makes for some extremely amusing reading. No Tags Social bookmark this page [...]
April 11th, 2006 at 6:19 am
GW - the answer to your questions are, yes. Actually a while ago after I read a similiar thread like this on ThreadWatch maybe and the responses were pretty much like Mike’s (btw: Mike, if your’re waiting for someone to explain it to you then you’ve already lost… It’s sorta like those SEOs who wait around for other to figure things out instead of testing things themselves… they too have already lost in compettitive spaces), I started doing some research and have been working with friends who have much larger networks than mine. Between getting the data and putting it into a cohesive document I’d say I’m about 2 months away. I’ll let ya know when it’s done.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:33 am
I need a spellchecker - lol - see what happens when I comment before coffee. Actually here’s a good use of using mySpace to build traffic and sales: Web Strategy: “Viral Chicklets” applied to MySpace
April 11th, 2006 at 10:58 am
You can’t even add AdSense to MySpace because they don’t allow JavaScript…
I would be interested to know how well the actual advertisers on MySpace are doing… I’m sure they can target certain age groups, sex, geographic area, education… right?
April 11th, 2006 at 10:59 am
You can’t even add AdSense to MySpace because they don’t allow JavaScript…
I would be interested to know how well the actual advertisers on MySpace are doing… I’m sure they can target certain age groups, sex, geographic area, education… right?
April 11th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
You don’t gotta have adsense on your myspace account. You gotta drive the myspace traffic to your website where the adsense is.
I’ve been studying this account, http://www.myspace.com/blogthings
Every “View More” link on the profile, links to the blogthings.com website, where the adsense is.
How Selfish Are You? (view more)
What’s Your Theme Song? (view more)
What Will Your Famous Last Words Be? (view more)
What Color Is Your Lucky Underwear? (view more)
What Kind of Cookie Are You? (view more)
ect. ect.
It’s absolutely amazing, considering this person has 38,490 friends and all that traffic is funneled to their website.
And the sheer genius of it all is that the profile says 24 year old girl, with a stock photo. But I have a strong suspicion that this is not a girl at all, I’m not sure who it is actually.
But if this were a 24 year old girl she’d be talking to her friends on her profile, and from I can see, and maybe I’m wrong, but blogthings hasn’t left any comments anywhere on myspace. Now what does that tell you?
It’s not a girl at all, and this person has over 38,000 people fooled. Plus there is no conact information on blogthings.com, and blogthings.com seems to be a part of some corporation called Big Shiba bigshiba.com
If you could start some service like this, posing as a young girl of course, you’d have it made.
April 12th, 2006 at 4:24 am
Mike, I’ll just ignore the inherent sexism in your comment and move on… Anyone who has received a friend request from me knows how I feel about the power of being “an 18 yr old girl” on MySpace however, anyone who actually uses MySpace realizes that many profiles are product profiles (like this one)and that the “age” of someone may not be accurate, since you need to add an age to join. Do you think that the Wendy’s Square Burger Profile is a 28 yr old male? So no one is being fooled… at least in this example per se…
April 12th, 2006 at 6:12 am
The age thing - yea sounds funny considering many of us are not even 30 yet… It’s rather unwillingness to discover something that’s considered a teenager thing and adapt/adopt it that accounts for us old SEOs losing that market’s potential. The marketer (posing as a ) girl is smart to do what they do but stupid NOT to use the comments - there are even automated tools for commenting on MySpace and i can think of at least a few ways of using them to your benefit already… Natasha - I doubt it’s sexism, more like statisics, not to put you down, i do respect you, but there are not many women in this business like yourself.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:04 am
…the point being that myspace is all about creating viral content. It has to be something fun and riduculous, that these kids will want to stick on their profile, with a link back to your site of course.
It’s funny I didn’t realize all this before. I’m no good at creating viral content, I’ve tried too many times and failed too many times, so I’ll leave it to someone else.
But If it’s something dull and boring like SEO, I don’t think these kids are gonna be interested. But if it has to do with clothes or hair styles, or shopping, or ringtones or annoying music, you’d be in.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:32 am
I see some amazing opportunities, when I get back from pubcon look for a multi-part myspace series
April 12th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Irish: I couldn’t agree more in regards to “adapt/adopt”… automated commenting you say (I’ll have to get that info from you)…. this would work great for people with large networks of friends such as musicians who use MySpace for marketing/networking… as well as for that 4 letter word in the SEO biz
Mike: There are other ways to use MySpace other than viral content…
GW: Ya beat me to the punch - I can’t wait to read it. I was gonna write about some ways to use it today (after posting here this morning)… but I’ll save it and post after yours so there’s no duplication and everyone benefits from a broader range of ideas on how to use MySpace for online marketing.
Kudos!
April 13th, 2006 at 2:46 am
>But If it’s something dull and boring like SEO, I don’t think these kids are gonna be interested.
hehe - so our little group is safe and won’t get too many intruders! LOL
Gray - can’t wait to read it either.
April 14th, 2006 at 8:16 am
“But If it’s something dull and boring like SEO, I don’t think these kids are gonna be interested.”
That is exactly why I try not to be obvious about what I use MySpace for. The fact that my blog postings are crazy anti-bush rants that seem to appeal to the angry American youth helps get people to the MySpace profile. Meanwhile, I send out bulletins to over 800 people a day that say “Hey, check out this article about… (INSERT LINK TO PAGE ON Associatedcontent.com)” and watch traffic spike over the next few hours.
“btw: Mike, if your’re waiting for someone to explain it to you then you’ve already lost…”
Agreed!
By the way, another big welcome to my network for Greywolf, and here’s hoping that the Irish Wonder accepts my Linkedin Invite that should get forwarded from D. Zuls.
April 16th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
[...] Here are a few examples where we made to recently: - Google Base - but porn marketers got there before SEOs - MySpace (also here) - but judging by the amount and topics of spam that already exists there, email spammers made it first to there - Digg - well I can’t really think of who made it there first but it’s an established community that’s been there for like 5 years already, judging by the domain registration date - LinkedIn (also here) - this is almost becoming mainstream now, Matt Cutts has been hanging out in LinkedIn for a while now. [...]
April 25th, 2006 at 7:39 am
[...] I’ll fully admit my opinion was pretty close to Greg of BOTW (see comments) it was a bunch of ugly pages made by pimply faced teens and dudes pretending to be babes (not that I’ve ever done that). While my space has both of those two groups solidly covered there are real and legitimate opportunities and implementations on MySpace. However there are two basic things we need to go over if you want to use My Space as a marketing tool. [...]
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:57 pm
The only reason I go on my space is meeting up with old friends from when I was in school… its like a free version of classmates.com. I am also on 360 and I like the RSS feature there.
September 15th, 2006 at 8:28 am
The people like the freedom they get with creating profiles etc (they dont see it as ugly). They are just normal people, not tech people. With the new networks they have less possibilities, i think myspace stays popular. It has his security problems, everyone knows this. But you should simply be aware of it when using it.
It’s nice to generate traffic of it. Links everywhere.. In Holland we have partyflock.. also a success here (poor they have only dutch language available).
I added you as a friend at myspace
Greets
June 6th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Can you help me on my password and my id
December 9th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
[...] are a few examples where we made to recently: - Google Base - but porn marketers got there before SEOs - MySpace (also here) - but judging by the amount and [...]