Facebook vs. MySpace

You know, Facebook kicks so much ass over MySpace.

MySpace is good for a public identity. Like if you're a band or a comic or a celebrity or something and you need a web presence, MySpace is the way to do it. It's a quick way to get a feature-laden web site up for free with built-in publicity. Easy. Simple. Done.

Facebook on the other hand is much better for the personal level of social networking. In stark contrast to MySpace, you're not riddled with random friend requests, otherwise known as MySpace Spam. Friends on Facebook are grouped by their affiliation with you (high school, college, job, etc.) making them much easier to find because they are targeted searches. you will actually have a network of your friends. MySpace is kind of a free-for-all. Any random schmuck will try to be your friend.

Facebook is MUCH cleaner, prettier, more functional than MySpace. MySpace offers its users the ability to customize their layout, but that usually leads to someone putting as much garbage as they can in a layout, which then makes the layout slower, offensive, or non-functional to the casual viewer. When I just want to add you as a friend, I don't want to sit and wait for your layout to load, with your f***ed up graphics and your music player blasting Omarion at me. I just want to add you ass a friend. Some of m best friends on MySpace have the poorest choices in layouts.

Facebook has the ability to add and or design fun web applications which can be installed like plug-ins to a user's profile. This alone creates business/developer/strategic partnerships with Facebook, something MySpace is currently unable to capitalize on.

Facebook is geared much more to Web 2.0. If you don't know or understand what Web 2.0 is, then don't bother reading this section. Rather than having pages laden with large blocky advertisements and javascript errors like MySpace does, Facebook is slick, easy to use, easy to navigate, and takes advantage of those things that should be used when designing in Web 2.0, like AJAX. The bottom line is that Web 2.0 is supposed to be all about the user experience (usability). MySpace is clunky kludgy, hard to use, riddled with errors, and undergoes maintenance nearly every other week, which usually doesn't fix some of its major issues. Facebook on the other hand is clean, cutting edge, feature rich, functional, and very rarely (although I have spotted a few, no question) has errors. Or at least has significantly fewer errors than MySpace.

I've even heard multiple companies (including the one I work for) including Facebook applications as part of their overall product base. How often does that happen? Although, granted a lot of media (TV/Film/Radio/Music/Comedy) includes MySpace as part of publicity campaigns, so I will give them credit for that.

It seems like you could break down your major social networking sites like this:
Professional: LinkedIn
Media/Entertainment: MySpace
Personal: Facebook

Facebook just seems like more of a personal touch to me. Although yes, I will continue to use both, I'm going to begin gravitating more toward Facebook.

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