The increasingly ubiquitous social networking website has, in recent months, been scoring more online page views than Google, and with an estimated 170,000 new members signing up every day, the cultural consensus suggests that MySpace has only begun to make its presence felt as a bona fide generation-definer.

Much has been made of nouveau Britpop sensations The Arctic Monkeys (pictured), whose word-ofmouth rise to super stardom was driven by a MySpace presence; they don't have to worry about breaking the states, MySpace has already done the job for them far better than any elaborate marketing campaign ever could.

You go to see any live concert imaginable in NYC these days, and the acts are furiously plugging their MySpace page at every imaginable juncture . . . thus, the playing fields are suddenly absolutely level for any potential musical sensation (our own favourite MySpace discovery of late has to be Lismore . . .

slinky, minimal ambient electronica from New Jersey). Not bad for an underfinanced, under-theradar start-up launched in January 2006 by newly minted millionaires Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson . . .

one that now boasts well over 50 million members, along with newly launched music and film divisions.

It's a given that cuttingedge word-of-mouth movements are immediately co-opted by the mainstream . . .

in this case, MySpace's new owner, fiendish media tyrannosaurus Rupert Murdoch . . . but where does this particular revolution go from home?

Remember . . . on MySpace, every member is a superstar AND a potential punter. The hard sell starts here. Did you ever feel you missed the zeitgeist by about five minutes?