A couple of years ago I did join MySpace, thinking it might be my kind of thing. I created an account and within a few days I had small network of 'friends'. I only visited the site a few times and I can see that it becomes a rather addictive past time. In July 2005 something changed. Republican pro-war media tycoon Rupert Murdoch had 'bought' the community. From that moment on a different light shined on the 'community' for me. MySpace provides a huge profit base for Murdoch's business in corporate advertising. Murdoch is an Australian global media executive and is the controlling shareholder, chairman and managing director of the News Corporation, based in New York. In the US this includes the republican rightwing Fox News Channel, in the UK, tabloids such as The Sun, News of the World and The Times. The Sun is currently with over 3,5 million in circulation the most read paper in the UK. Murdoch is one of the few chief executives of any multinational media corporation who has a controlling ownership share in the corporation. He has been discribed as being the most powerful in the world of (corporate) media. In the US Murdoch has a long history of supporting the Republican Party and was a close friend of Ronald Reagan. The News Corporation ownes hundreds of newspapers, TV Channels, film studios, radio channels and internet assests all over Europe, the US, Latin America, Russia, India and as far and wide as Fuji, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and China. Murdoch's News Corporation currently juggles with over $60 billion worth of assests in over 70 countries, including more than 300 million cable subscribers. Over the past year, he has spent nearly $1.5 billion on new-breed Internet companies, including MySpace, hoping to 'transform the free social network into a colossal marketing machine'.

Needless to say Indymedia and many other independent media outlets excist as a counterpart to the rightwing policitical propaganda that Murdochs empire produces. For example, Murdoch's papers strongly supported George W. Bush in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and his publications worldwide tend to adopt pro-American views. During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq for example, all 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in favor of the war. Another example some might recall is the near publication the Chris Patten book. Chris Patten was a British politician who became the governor of Hong Kong just prior to its handover to China. A biography of Chris Patten was due to be published by Harper Collins (part of News Corporation) but it was dropped. It was alledged that the reasoning behind the drop was due to the fact that it was critical of China's human rights. News Corporation was, at the time, trying to complete a deal regarding Star TV with the Chinese government. The News Corporation has also been accused of using the combined power of its consolidated media assets to push out rivals and push towards a media monopoly. An example of this would be News Corporation's attempt to buy the football club Manchester United. In 1998 News Corp bid £623.4 million for the UK based football club. It's fans were outraged and raised the question of an encroaching monopoly, as News Corporation owned the rights to broadcast the all premiere league matches, of which Manchester United was one. It was alleged that by controlling Manchester United, News Corporation could influence the decisions about the selling of the rights to broadcast the all premiere league matches.

Calling for a new online social network

It does strike me that some groups make so easily use of the corporate owned MySpace network. Even though Indymedia UK has helped promote some peoples activities on MySpace in the past (1) | (2) | (3), the Indymedia network has always actively promoted and facilitated the use of open source software, and alternatives to the commercial and corporate media currently dominating our lives. From what I can see Indymedia was set up as a tool for information sharing and social networking. Although Indymedia needs to improve its social networking capacity, is there really a need to move over to MySpace? The main question is: is it time for Indymedia to build a new social online network with similair features to sites like MySpace, Live Journal, Bebo, etc? After all people seem to hang out elsewhere, which distracts from what Indymedia is all about: bringing people together. There is an interesting development of open source social networking software in the pipeline called the Appleseed Project. 'The Appleseed Project is an effort to create open source Social Networking software that is based on a distributed model. Apart from that, Appleseed will also have a strong focus on privacy and security, as well as a commitment to seeing the user as an online citizen, as opposed to a consumer to be targetted. This is in stark contrast to current social networking websites, who rely heavily on ad placement and data mining of their users. ' Ah, now that sounds like the kind of place I'd like hang out. A Beta version has been released. Is the time ripe to set up shop ??

Links: the myspace con ! | Spooks at Google and MySpace, PayPal, YouTube, Ebay, and Yahoo | Myspace/Fox Artists beware!! | American Non-Profit Seeks to Transform Global Human Rights Advocacy | Bill Moyers: 'Big Media is Ravenous'

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