The Ins and Outs of the “Grouping” Feature

MySpace is taking America by storm, at least American youth, that is. An entire generation of adolescents and 20-somethings are taking to the Internet in order to stay in touch with new and old friends and to live their virtual lives. MySpace is just one of the virtual Internet platforms that are so commonly used among this generation of Americans, but it’s one of the fastest-growing online communities at present. Ten years ago, few high school students had their own email address and five years ago all high school students had their own address and their own chat name. In today’s virtual world, it’s the MySpace account that comes to mind first when this generation is getting online.

Though many of these MySpace users are making full use of friends’ lists, commenting and bulletin posting, not everyone is using the group feature to its full extent. While some people base their MySpace experience on the groups in which they are members, a lot of MySpace users aren’t members of any of the groups at all. The third category is made up of people who are members of various MySpace groups, but don’t really participate in any of the group’s discussion forums or other activities. Is the group feature the most used feature? No. However, it still has its merits.

Groups can be formed by any MySpace member and can be made public or private. Some groups are absolutely huge, with thousands of members across the country and across the world. Other groups were created and didn’t seem too popular, and still have only a handful of members. It doesn’t help matters that when searching for a group, the search engine rates the groups by their member count, so every time you do a search and more than 100 groups pop up, the ones with the most members are near the front of the list. Who has time to go through 10 pages of search results? So the big groups get bigger and the small groups stay, well, tiny.

A very small number of groups have a distinct and productive purpose, such as gathering information from other MySpace members on a topic that you have in common. For example, if you want to study abroad, joining a group with that focus will not only give you practical information about making it happen, but will also give you some personal tips on how to adjust to life, etc. It’s a virtual support network. Other groups reach a kind of fan-cult status, such as a group of fans of a certain celebrity, a television show or a musical. These groups are not as productive, but they are certainly popular and entertaining. In addition to these productive and distinctive groups, there are groups that are formed simply to bash someone or something. This is where the negative side of grouping on MySpace becomes crystal clear.

There are groups for students of a specific school who hate a certain class. Some are explicit about the reason for the class’ unpopularity; some are more and less explicit about students’ complaints about the complaints about the teacher. This is a place where parents and adults in general start thinking the MySpace groups, and perhaps MySpace as a whole is not such a productive way of spending one’s extra-curricular activities time. Of course, all adults hope that their children are not forming groups against a particular, unpopular child at the school, but whether the target is a class, a teacher or a student, the forum is one of mutual complaint, negativity, and sometimes threats. There’s no doubt this MySpace feature needs a little monitoring.