Myspace, Friendster, Tagged, Hi5, Facebook, Sconex, blackplanet and 100s of others social networking sites have been exploded in 2005 to present. For many, if you don't have any of those, boy, you're not up-to-date.

I admit that I have myspace, sconex, hi5, facebook and tagged. However, I rarely use any of them. People from my school just add me onto their list just to show that they are popular. The more people they have on the list the better...it means that they are popular or have a lot of friends.

Many of you know issues that surrounded by myspace.com. Predators are out on these social networking sites especially myspace, looking for young people for sex. Kids as young as 12 can have a myspace by simply lie on their date of birth. So how safe are these sites? Very little. So what if you can set it private? People are just going to ask you to add and it's up to you to accept them. My youngest sister for example, she set her myspace private and yet accepts just about everyone who ask to add him/her. Yesterday, I found out about it so I told her to delete her myspace in which she did.

Let's talk about myspace...

Because there are many controversies around myspace.com, my question is should myspace just shut itself down?

Why did I ask that? Well, if a business gets a bad reputation, usually it closes down its business. Many parents see that myspace is a bad web site. As one of the progressiveu users said that she blocked myspace becuase it looks uneducational and  for the safety of her child. So far, myspace is the most popular social networking site that gets on the news daily (mostly in a negative way). Plus, anybody can get a myspace as long as they lie their real age. Even if you try to set it private...you can just accept anybody who "wants to get to know you." Remember myspace is a "place for friends." So, anybody can be friend with you and yes including child predator.

Another point, in my economics class, my teacher was reading an article from Sunday NY Times. It talked about job applicants. From what I remember, my teacher said company executive and workers check their applicants' background through myspace. How? well, they can google your name (on google.com) and bam! your name would come up. If you have a myspace and you put your real name on it...oh boy! they are going to go your site and read everything about you that you and your people put on your myspace. (I'll put up the article, if I can find it) 

"Why don't we just shut myspace down and things would be much better?" My friend asked.

Well honey, it's not that easy. Aside from the negativity of myspace, this site actually helps the underground artists to be able to sell themselves and promote their music online. Myspace is like a way of keeping in touch with other people including high school friends and others. My year book, on the autograph section, people write stuff, wish me the best of luck in college and instead of giving me their phone numbers or email address, they write their myspace sites as a way to reach them. How crazy is that? But it's true. Myspace is becoming another way of communicate people and close friends. Just simply put a comment on a person's page and write a shout out or something along the line.

So should myspace be shut down?

In my opinion, no. I think users should be more aware of the site and use it wisely. It's kindda retarded to say but "don't add people that you don't know." This way, you can get away from predators. Plus, try not to put your real name/ identity on myspace or anysite familiar to it. This way, you are safe from identity thief and stuff. 

So what do you think?