The team from MySpace were on stage this morning talking about the application and how they have used the Microsoft technologies to support the 60million users it has signed up. The use ASP.net and SQL server as infrastruture and recently moved to .net 2.0 for the home pages. In doing so, they reduced CPU usage from 85% down to 27% and cut the number of servers from 246 down to 150. All in all fans of the technology.
On the other side of MySpace, there’s a great paper from Danah Boyd about how people are using myspace, how it is supporting and driving a change of culture:
What we’re seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they’ve always done – repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture.
Technology will have an effect because the underlying architecture and the opportunities afforded are fundamentally different. But youth will continue to work out identity issues, hang out and create spaces that are their own, regardless of what technologies are available.
