social networking sites
Posted on 27th September 2006 by antuan goodwinI’ve kinda wanted a Facebook (FB) page for a while, but either I forgot my alumni email address or AiA didn’t give me one. Consequently, I’ve been locked out and unable to contact my friends who use FB exclusively… until now. As some of you may know, the Facebook has opened its little digital doors to the public in a bid to become a competitor to MySpace in the social networking market and generate more cha-chinggg. Since I’m now an opinionated user of both and self-appointed expert, I’m inclined to do a little comparison.
antgoo on facebook | antgoo on myspace
the incumbent: myspace
Oh MySpace… where to start? I guess I’ll start with the positives, the biggest being the pure massiveness of MySpace’s network. There are enough MySpace users to start a sovereign nation. As a social networking site, this is of the utmost importance. They’re not modest about that headcount either.
But I have to wonder, how many of those pages are active? How many of them are corporate sponsors? bands? false accounts set up by spammers? MySpace’s openness is also one of the most annoying parts about it. True, music and celebrity pages are interesting ways to learn about new music and old favorites. My biggest pet peeve is the spammers thought. Every week, I receive 2+ friend requests from some half-naked girl with one picture in her gallery and nothing in her profile but a link to her “Sexy Webcam”. It got so ridiculous that at one point I received two invites using the same stock image. Sad.
The next biggest issue with MySpace started out as a hack, but has grown out of control: page customization. What began with simple HTML exploits to make your page a little unique has grown into an entire micro-economy of page customization websites, with download-able templates and flash galleries, music videos and long-irrelevant quizzes. This would be awesome (and many will argue that it is) but the problem is that people just go over the top with it. There are some people who’s pages I can’t view because everything is at 50% opacity or I can’t click the links because there are cascading javascript marquees blocking the anchors.
This isn’t even a design issue, it’s a usability issue. Some pages I’ve visited load 2 music videos, a song and a few flash photo galleries and start auto-playing them all! On a high speed connection, I get frustrated and abort. If I can’t view someone’s page without it crashing my computer, how can I network with them? Then again, do I even want to network with them?
MySpace’s default theme is actually pretty good, easy to read and fast loading. The problem, then is the users. My page on MySpace has been modded since about day one. It started with simple color swaps. Recently, I’ve tweaked it pretty good with the help of a tutorial site. But there’s nothing on my page that would cause hell to break loose in your browser. I don’t feel like a hypocrite, because I support customization. It’s just my belief that self-moderation should be practiced.
now open to the public: facebook
Facebook has been until recently been closed to exclusively students with campus email addresses. Which means that it’s got a smaller network on the outset. Fortunately, for me, this group of people is pretty much comprised of people in or close to my age group.
I’ve only had 2 days to play with the interface, but it looks like Facebook offers no real way to customize the content of your page. You pretty much have to stick to their script. This sucks for those who just need to customize everything, but usability is tip top. All pages load pretty quickly, and you know exactly where to look for the information you need. I’ve come to think of Facebook as more of a tool, much like I think of the Yellow pages. It looks pretty plain, but it’s clean and easy to use.
On cool thing I like about Facebook is the unlimited picture uploads with tagging. MySpace only lets you upload 12 pictures at a time. Which sucks for those who want to build online galleries. They also lack Facebooks coolest feature, tags. Every picture you upload can be tagged with information about who’s in it and automatically linked to their pages. This really puts the network into social networking.
Actually most features in Facebook are network-centric. If you list a book, movie or song in your interests, it becomes a link to people in your network with similar interests. This is a really cool feature when you’re looking for others who enjoy midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. As a tool for finding people you have things in common with, Facebook has a leg up on MySpace.
One more thing that bears mentioning is that non-Facebook users and non-friends can’t view most your page. This isn’t too huge of a deal now that anyone can join up, but it is an additional layer of security for those who want to be open on the web to people they know, but not strangers trolling the tubes of the interweb. For example, I’m able to safely post my cellphone number on my page, so that friends can call me, something I’d NEVER do on a google-indexed MySpace page.
initial conclusions
These are two sites that use different means to the same ends.
Facebook is a great tool, it’s like a sniper rifle. It’s very easy to find people you know or who have similar interests. The interface is clean and fast. The security of Facebook at least appears to be a little higher than MySpace. It may take a while to make a lot of friends, but there’s a better chance (IMHO) of finding people who you’ll actually communicate with. But like all specialized tools, it takes some getting used to and the learning curve may be a bit steep for some simpletons. Facebook is for hardcore networkers.
On the other hand, MySpace is crude like a club or grenade. It’s down and dirty, simple, easy to use. It’s messy, but any chimp could hop on and pound together a profile in less than an hour. Within 2 days of campaigning, one could easily amass a few hundred friends (with the aid of a provocative gallery), then not communicate consistently with any of them. MySpace is for social butterflies.
These of course are just my opinions and reflect what I see as the potential for each site. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m enjoying Facebook more than MySpace, but which will I use? Though I’ll probably use Facebook more, I will continue to use both of them… At the end of the day, I have enough friends on both networks to justify joint usage.
