Computer Support Blog

The notion that each person wears many different masks in the course of their lifetime and in different groups, is a very old idea.  How you interact with other people and what you choose to show one group of person in your life changes based on very old social mandates and ideas.  With the rise of the Internet and the subsequent explosion of social networking sites, you put quite a bit of information about yourself online every year.  Unfortunately, all of that information may create a much jumbled view of who you are and may be mixed in with information about other people who happen to share the same name as you.  Now there is a new site that has the sole goal of helping you create a single, focused, online profile that collects all of your disparate elements in one place.  That site is Vizify and it is very cool. Read more »

At one time, not that long ago, Internet users looking for a social media experience went immediately to MySpace. There, they could update their profile, post messages, and talk to their friends. The site was mainly a hit with teenagers, but featured a great space for independent musicians to get their music featured because of the large media section on the site.

Read more »

Back in the day, Myspace.com was the dominant social network on the Internet.  MySpace was cool and it was fun and it introduced most of the United States to the very concept of Internet social networks.  While everyone who ever visited MySpace might have a different perception of it or vastly different experiences on it, MySpace had one essential constant.  That constant was Tom.

Tom – Tom from MySpace, MySpace Tom, everybody’s friend Tom – is Thomas Anderson.  Thomas Anderson appeared as Tom on every single person’s MySpace page when they first signed up for an account from the creation of the site through 2010.  You remember Tom, right?  He was the one in the white shirt, smiling looking over his shoulder.  He was your first “friend” on MySpace.  He was everyone’s first friend on MySpace because Tom was the default friend.

Did you ever wonder just who Tom was, though?

Thomas Anderson was a bored genius as a child.  Deeply interested in computers, Thomas learned to hack at a young age and when he was a teenager, he was known in the hacking community by his online moniker Lord Flathead.  As Lord Flathead, Thomas hacked into Chase Manhattan Bank’s security system, which brought him to the attention of the F.B.I.  After studying at the University of California at Berkeley, he drifted for a while.  Thomas Anderson was the lead singer of the band Swank before spending an extended period in Taiwan.  When Thomas returned to the United States, he began Master’s studies in Critical Film Studies before becoming a product tester and copywriter for XDrive.

It was at XDrive that Thomas met Chris DeWolfe.  Within four years of meeting, Thomas Anderson and Chris DeWolfe would create MySpace.  While DeWolfe focused on the business end of MySpace and the pair programmed together, it was Thomas Anderson who was primarily responsible for the development of MySpace.  As a result, it was Thomas who fixed bugs and also made MySpace cool.  Promoting MySpace in the programming world, Thomas encouraged computer programmers to develop applications for the MySpace platform.  Under Thomas Anderson, MySpace became one of the most profitable Internet start-ups of all time.

Thomas Anderson remained one of the key executives of MySpace through the website’s sale to News Corp.  Thomas remained with the company until 2009, when he stepped down as President of MySpace.  Shortly thereafter, MySpace underwent massive layoffs and lost millions of users.  Without Tom, MySpace just couldn’t survive!

Now, Thomas Anderson is retired (at age 41!), though he is a prominent presence on Facebook and the emerging Google+.  You know a social network is promising when Tom shows up on it!

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com

Right about now, Justin Timberlake must feel like he has egg on his face.  In June of 2011, Justin Timberlake and Specific Media bought Myspace.com and began to retune the website to place more of an emphasis on music.  Myspace now features popular and up and coming musical artists and if you did not know that, it is no surprise: Myspace.com has fallen to the 88^th Top Site in the U.S., below The Drudge Report and CBS Sports.

Even in its heyday, Myspace was not exactly a haven of Internet security.  More than suffering from spreading viruses, Myspace users found the Internet security threat of stalkers.  As the first online social network for many users, Myspace users quickly found that the key component to Internet security is simply not putting deeply personal information about yourself on your page.  As well, the lax Internet security measures on Myspace allowed adult predators to gain access to children eighteen and younger.

In addition to basic Internet security concerns embodied by Myspace publishing users’ birthdays and birthplaces, which allowed some crafty criminals to divine portions of users’ social security numbers, Myspace users have found there is simply no good reason to go back to Myspace.  Unlike other social network sites that provide archives for online storage, Myspace encouraged users to link to external sites.  As a result, Myspace quickly turned into a portal to other, cooler sites, as opposed to one where users built an online storage depot of their own, cool works.

It is clear that Justin Timberlake is trying to change that now.  But intensifying the Internet security to Myspace and rebranding the site as an online storage option for the music and music videos of musical artists has not turned around Myspace’s slide in popularity.  The artists who are using Myspace as an online storage venue often repost their music and videos to other sites, leaving little unique content to draw users back.

More than Internet security concerns and the desire to combine social networking with online storage, a hook that photo sharing social networks have found effective, much of the demise of Myspace simply comes from the fact that it is not cool anymore.  Social networking is following the same long term ebb and flow of every trend and it is clear that Myspace is in the unenviable flow wherein the network is not cool to mainstream users.  Counterculture users are not yet using Myspace, even ironically.

Justin Timberlake is just a victim of bad timing, buying into a network that has already jumped the shark.  More than fear of Internet security threats or the desire to start up an online storage folder on a network that they have already left, users are stating that they are happy to get their music on other sites and no amount of rebranding Myspace will make them come back.

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com