MySpace and Facebook Face Off
I am a very active participant in both of the biggest social networks (MySpace and Facebook), and if you get online much, you probably are as well. These social networks, along with a few others, are taking over the internet. It’s nearly gotten to the point that is as important to have an account at these sites as it is to have email. No reason not to have both, but for arguments sake, let’s say you can only pick one; which do you choose?
MySpace Pros
- Nearly Infinite customization options. Everything in the areas of colors, backgrounds, fonts, and over all style is user controlled. An entire (profitable) industry has been born dedicated to providing CSS layouts and other all types of other niceties for MySpace pages. Plus, with a tiny bit of html know how, you can make your own stuff, and express your artistic side.
- Privacy. It’s true that by using a tool or two a power user can still look at a lot of stuff you decide to hide, such as comments. But to keep away the prying eyes of the general populous, inserting a little piece of code into your ‘About Me’ is usually enough to make sure you keep your business your business.
- Awesome network of musicians and film makers. MySpace brings with it a video hosting section that could rival YouTube, and the music selection is astonishing. Many independent bands get discovered there, and it’s one of the best ways I’ve found to discover lesser known artists.
- Blogs. I’m all about blogging (duh!), and no blogging system is easier to use than MySpace’s. That’s where I really caught ‘the bug;’ I still update it, and I probably always will. It’s my ‘personal’ blog, and I like it being where all my online friends can have easy access to it, but strangers wandering in from Google cannot.
MySpace Cons
- Ads are freaking everywhere, some of them being quite adult in nature. Not a place I recommend for young kids (10 and younger). Others are just very annoying; they flash and make noise. I hate that.
- To get the most out of the service, you kind of have to learn some simple html. This is kind of a pro as well as a con, html is something that’s good to learn a little bit about, but it can certainly be tricky for those that are not especially computer literate.
- Spam. Especially geared towards young men. Expect porn invites daily, unless you make your profile private. This has gotten better (a lot better), but it’s not gone by any means.
- All the things that make some of the sites look so great; pictures, videos, music, etc. can really bog down a slower dial-up internet connection. Dial ups are becoming less and less common, but a great many people still use them.
Facebook Pros
- Super simple, and incredibly easy to use. Just fill out the forms, and you’re done. You can’t change things like your font, background, etc, so you’re good to go within a couple of minutes.
- Far less spam. I’ve been registered and active for several months, and I’ve never received anything that even resembles spam.
- Being nosy. Some people just like to know who said what, and when. Facebook gives you a ‘news’ feed of all of your friends activities. As long as two people are friends of yours, you can see what they’re saying to each other on their Wall’s, Pokes, etc.
- Third party developers are creating interesting little applications to help you personalize your page a bit, and many of them are very creative.
Facebook Cons
- At the core, all the pages look exactly the same. Some are just more cluttered than others. This removes a lot of your ability to use it as a medium to express yourself. You can add applications, but all that’s really doing is adding an extra box to your page.
- Keeping your privacy. You have to jump through a couple hoops to keep your stuff from showing up on friend’s feeds. Not cool at all. It should be the other way around; you should have to give permission.
- TMI. It can be annoying looking at your feed, and seeing a hundred instances of ‘x is now friends with x.’
- No true blogging options. Boo!
I like both, I’ll continue to use both (a lot), but if I had to choose one and only one one, I’d have to choose MySpace. I’m a creative individual, and MySpace allows me the tools to be creative. Regardless of which you choose, the best thing about both sites; they’re free! You’ll have hours, or in my case years, of good times. Can’t beat that!
–Jeremy Hobbs
web 2.0, facebook, myspace, social networking
