SoxSpace - 3 Year Anniversary by Jared Carrabis
Thank you Sox fans!


When Carrabis was just 16-years-old, he was handed a MySpace account plainly titled "Red Sox." The account had a decently sized platform to work with having just over 2,000 "friends" on it. Jared then went to work on the unoriginal page by adding stats, team history information, photos and various other decorative graphics to the site. After he was satisfied with the transformation of the page, Carrabis dubbed his newly created project "SoxSpace" on January 1, 2006.

The page started out as just a place for Red Sox fans to come and post their thoughts, read stats and look at pictures. But one after another, Red Sox-themed MySpace accounts started to sprout all over the network. Wanting to make SoxSpace different from the other accounts, Carrabis and a fellow Red Sox fan that he had met through the SoxSpace comment board (Jimmy) began posting news clips through bulletins to keep everyone on SoxSpace's friends list up to date. The two posted original blogs and even posted SoxSpace guest blogs. Before the 2007 season got underway, Jimmy transferred to a college in Tampa, Florida and could no longer contribute to SoxSpace, thus opening the door for Carrabis to post solo.

When Carrabis once again became the lone operator of SoxSpace in December of 2006, he took writing blogs from just a hobby to something that he wanted to focus on making it into his career in the future. He began to read the Boston Herald and Boston Globe more closely. Not so much as to what they were saying but as to how the writers were saying it. He turned around and applied the writing skills of best in Boston to how he would create a writing style of his own for the SoxSpace audience to enjoy daily.

At the age of 17, Carrabis began to write his own original pieces and post news clips from the Globe and Herald as Sox fans began to take notice of the increasing popularity of SoxSpace. The page became most useful to Red Sox fans that did not have the luxury of a NESN or a Boston newspaper wherever they lived. Many men and women serving in the United States military began to rely on SoxSpace's original blogs and news updates as their only source of Red Sox information when they had limited time to log onto the Internet. Jared Carrabis never made a dime for his uncountable hours of effort but it was the 'thank you's' he received from those serving this country and protecting our freedom that motivated him daily.

In August 2007, Major League Baseball forced MySpace to delete SoxSpace permanently along with a handful of other baseball fan sites on MySpace.com. The removal of SoxSpace and the other baseball fan sites sent a shock wave through baseball fanatic MySpace users around the world. The SoxSpace readers reacted instantly sending emails to the Red Sox, MLB, MySpace administration, local news outlets, and to anyone else that would help bring SoxSpace back. After 24 hours, the uproar got the attention of the President of MySpace.com, Tom Anderson. Anderson, more famously known as "Tom from MySpace," sent a personal message to Carrabis and informed him that SoxSpace was going to return. After a 48 hour hiatus, SoxSpace was reborn and Carrabis has since made it his home for every single Red Sox blog he has ever written.

Since the creation of SoxSpace, the MySpace account has been viewed over 1.5 million times and has accumulated over 100,000 friends but with the deletion of unused profiles the account sits around 90,000. More importantly, the large audience has helped SoxSpace raise significant funds for the Jimmy Fund and The Lester Project. The SoxSpace audience's votes single handedly propelled Carrabis to a third place finish in the first ever election for President of Red Sox Nation, and in 2008 they voted him into office to become the very first Massachusetts Governor of Red Sox Nation. For all the hours that Carrabis put into keeping Red Sox Nation on their toes with his blogs and news posts, that was their way of patting him on the back and saying "Thank you."

With a great deal of Red Sox fans no longer checking their MySpace accounts and switching over to Facebook, Carrabis teamed up with Sully's Brand to build an official website where Red Sox fans can still read the SoxSpace blogs without having to log onto MySpace. The new page is sharper and more organized, and hopes to be the new home for SoxSpace.

After officially launching SoxSpaceNews.com, the next big project for Carrabis is to release his first book titled "One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk". The book is the story of his very unique and entertaining life story as a Red Sox fan all while intertwining his story with the actual story of the Boston Red Sox as the two stories progress. Set to drop around Opening Day 2009, Carrabis, 19, was quoted as saying, "Without the readers of SoxSpace, I wouldn't have a story worth reading. I owe everything to them and I'd be nowhere without each and every one of them. I am forever in debt to their support every step of the way."

Published on January 01, 2009

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