She's female, in her 20s, a Capricorn, single and lives in Locust Point - all that according to her MySpace page, where Charles Trenet's famous French song "La Mer" serves as background music.
She's also something of a cupcake.
All right, a cupcake business, anyway, as in the Baltimore Cupcake Co. And it/she has had a MySpace page since winter, complete with personal details - including gender - as required by the site.
"My head designer and baker, who is 24, had said ... it might be a good way to address another customer that we wouldn't normally get - a younger kind of client," said business owner Tracy Rice. "So I said, `Let's do it.'"
Social networking sites used to just be about the personal, places for people to post their thoughts, pictures and videos online, while making friends and trading messages. But many now lean toward the professional.
Facebook encourages users to connect with colleagues, and companies to post open jobs. YouTube now features commercials from Gap and Victoria's Secret. And MySpace is increasingly being used for promotional purposes.
Rice is one of at least a dozen local shopkeepers supplementing their standard Web pages with MySpace personality profiles for their companies. Many of the pages outline likes, dislikes and astrological signs, alongside basic business details.
(Most business profiles seem to take on the traits of whoever enters their information. For example, many of Baltimore Cupcake Co.' s details are similar to that of head baker Christine Frazier, who posted the profile for Rice.)
Business owners develop the pages because it's easy and free. And if done well, it often delivers messages directly to the coveted 15-to-34 demographic, a group that generally has a high amount of discretionary income and the all-important inclination to spend it.
Seventy percent of Americans in that age group say they use such social networking sites, and more than 70 million people checked out MySpace last month alone, according to comScore Media Metrix.
"In the last 12 months, we've seen a lot of people really adopt [the idea of promoting a business on a social site] and attempt to figure out what it means to their companies," said Ethan Giffin, chief executive of Baltimore-based Web consultants Groove Commerce LLC.
His company has set up its own MySpace page (www.myspace.com/groovecommerce) and a division to help others do it - for a price - as well. So far, Giffin has designed a MySpace page for his cousin (New York Times best-selling author Emily Giffin) and a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Hagerstown.
