MySpace loses to Wiki information

Today I read a interesting argument on the 'Hacking MySpace' blog that stated how users turned to wiki's for more information than the MySpace blog of a particular band. I think I have to agree, when I am looking for band information (and by this I assume people mean tour dates and biographical information) wiki is the best place to go. However, I also do a large amount of searching through listening, for which, MySpace is excellent. I'm wondering if actually there might be a more convoluted relationship between information and the MySpace user. Could it be that a large number of users may look at wiki after doing some 'audio' research through MySpace first?

Also, how many users base their decision on where to look for information based on the perceived authenticity of the site? By this I mean to tap into the still nostalgic members of the MySpace community, who believe groups and bands maintain their own MySpace profiles. This may compare to the commonly accepted idea that wikis can be produced by anyone. One would also assume that the MySpace profile contains more up-to-date information. In light of this why do many poeple choose a wiki for information? The article seems to suggest that the 'glitz and glamour' of some MySpace pages may be off-putting to those users who are thirsty for information. And I agree, there are many ways that a wiki may seem easier to navigate, but to what extent could it also be related to situation issue of being 'caught on MySpace'. I wonder this as I walk around my university library where Facebook and MySpace are frowned upon. Is a wiki now a way of seeming to be in line with the institution while still achieving some personal interests? It is true that it would more difficult to frown upon wikipedia in the same light as it has some obvious educational uses. The regimented style of the wiki page makes it unrecognisable as a piece that is not directed towards a certain activity.I certainly think there are many ways the switch to wiki could be conceived, and a level of information is definitely one of those.

On a final note, it was great to read the line 'we all love MySpace'. For the time being Facebook seems to be growing exponentially and it is nice to read that some people still wrestle with the issues that go on in MySpace.

'Life on the Move': Social network sites and online communities

I would like to join Daniel Skog(here) in advertising our roundtable discussion at this years IR 9.0 conference in Copenhagen. We have a great collection of people coming together to discuss the tribulations involved with studing 'community' now that SNSs are dominating the online social landscape. Here is an extract from the roundtable description:

Social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are rapidly becoming a popular area of research investigating online 'communities'. This immediately raises the question of how new SNSs can be understood as a descendent of the 'virtual community' that was popularized in the 1980's (Rheingold, 1993). One irrefutable piece of information is that the number of users that seem to be joining these new sites has been growing substantially over the last few years (i.e. comScore reported Facebook had an increase of 270% between June 2006 and June 2007). This could indicate that SNSs has become an integral part of everyday online activity as a whole. The purpose of this roundtable is to further discussions on the present shapes of online communities in light of the current trajectory of social network popularity. In particular, to what extent are online communities tied to a particular site? And consequently, how can we rethink notions of community in line with recent trends in SNSs?

[...] The underlying premise is that 'life on the move' produces a certain problem for academic researchers as to how we locate the individual (or the community) in such a dispersed social landscape. Therefore, how can we understand community involvement when users are members of a number of different community sites and SNSs and move regularly from one site to another? A further problem here is how we as researchers resist the mundane assumption that inherently complex online communities are only recognisable in terms of the users movement in and out of them, surely there is much more to it than that.