by Daniel Berman
Staff Photographer

It is hard to like dictators, pit bulls, and ruthless businessmen… and then there is Rupert Murdoch. There are only a handful of people in the world that I trust less than Ol’ Rupe’ and they are not nearly as evil.

Murdoch, having owned MySpace.com through his News Corp. company for over two years now, has transformed the way teenagers and adults communicate, but at what cost? The answer is as much as you allow it.

MySpace is not all bad, and as a freelance photographer, I have been able to promote my business through the website. As a college student, MySpace helps me network with fellow young photographers, and that is also helpful.

People can become misguided. However, when they begin to trust MySpace, they add it as a friend to their own life. Whenever a large corporation gets bought, big changes are in order—one of them when Murdoch took over in 2005, was to use powerful algorithms to literally learn from what you like.

Sound confusing? Consider this: Those who are familiar with the website will recall that it is little more than a series of ads (bulletins) and self-created marketing responses (surveys) that help to fuel one man’s impressive corporate portfolio.

So when we post bulletins that proclaim a love for Coke, Hollister and Rihanna, not only are we are informing our friends of our interests we are also giving Murdoch a vast array of marketable information about ourselves.

But this will only occur if you allow it to happen.

When I hop on MySpace, I am usually updating my profile page with new photography or reading up on what my friends are up to. If I post a survey response, the answers are often fake and contradictory— all the better to screw up Murdoch’s master plans. It blows my mind to read survey after survey from some of my younger friends—some of these surveys stretch as long as 200 questions.

How many of us would sit down and answer 200 questions if they were labeled properly, “2007 Big Business Marketing Survey?” I suspect a lot fewer of us.

The site offers a lot of valuable resources for the aspiring video auteur, the musician and the creative writer. It also can serve as a marketer’s dream if we allow it.

Backed by one of the most prolific media owners in the history of the world, MySpace is like the shrewd used car salesman dressed in a checkered suit. We can really only begin to trust him once we know the game we are all playing, but not winning.