MySpace vs. Facebook

Social networking sites have become quite a phenomenon in the last five years. Most notably, MySpace and Facebook have emerged as the front-runners in America. Will there always be room for two? It's not very convenient to regularly check both accounts plus an email account. Each company is copying some of the other's features while differentiating on their own unique features. There has been some criticism in the business press about the these sites' profitability, asserting they are overvalued. I do not know the economics of each business. But as a user of each for at least one year, I will analyze the pros and cons of each in hopes of yielding insight into, if there can only be one, which one will emerge the victor.

Before creating a MySpace profile two years ago, I held the common attitude that these sites were for kids and a waste of time with no real utility. My story of how I got involved is a common story for most users. Somebody sat me down one day and created a profile for me, which I never checked for several months. Once in a while, I would be with a different friend who would make me log in and add them as a friend. I never logged in on my own or surfed the site. Then one night I met a girl in a bar. Our conversation was so interesting that we went back to her apartment and talked until 3am. It is rare to meet somebody with whom you have so much in common and are so interested in each others' ideas and perspectives. We obviously exchanged phone numbers, but she also happened to be an avid MySpace user and she logged in and added me. I slept on her couch and left before she woke up. Over the next few weeks, we played phone tag but never succeeded in hanging out. When this happens, you usually stop calling each other and the friendship fizzles out. However, we kept a dialogue on MySpace, which is perfect for short greetings, thoughts, and staying in touch. The telephone medium would have run out of gas by the time we actually made time to hang out again. We got to know each other much better and are still friends today. The point of this story is that MySpace saved our friendship and sold me on the utility of social networking sites.

The main utility of these sites, which they all have in common, is staying in touch with friends. Residences, phone numbers, and email addresses change. You can lose friends forever. However, if you are friends with somebody on MySpace or Facebook, then you or your friend has to go out of their way to delete the other from their list of friends to lose the connection. I have friends in countries all over the world. I made particularly good friends with three people from France one semester. When will I be in France? I have no idea. But when I do, I have access to them via Facebook and we will reunite if possible.

I became active on MySpace around July 2006. I joined and became active on Facebook around January 2007. Before I joined Facebook, everybody I knew was on MySpace and I didn't see much of a need for another social networking website. However, I was in grad school and the new friends I was making were only on Facebook. At the time, Facebook only allowed members with a university email address. Facebook didn't have all the stalkers looking for a date that has come to personify MySpace. The perception seemed to be that Facebook was legitimate or quasi-professional while MySpace was sleazy and tacky. The perception isn't necessarily unfounded. MySpace is absolutely plagued with spam, phishing scams, and porn links. Since joining MySpace, I have regularly been friend-requested by a profile picture of a girl in a thong who thinks I'm cute and wants to chat or show me her webcam. This has illegitimized the "New Friend Requests!" icon. There is an endless array of links to promote Macy's cards, penis enlargement, and the ever sought-after 'profile tracker'. Phishing is so widespread that I was phished a few months ago, and I'm hip to the scam! I haven't engaged much in the applications popular on Facebook since the company went public, but I don't think I have seen any of this junk marketing on Facebook. Facebook is pure.

The initial draw and appeal of MySpace is that it simplifies creating a personal website. Websites for Dummies. There are thousands of backgrounds to choose from. You pick a song. You can put anything - music playlists, video, images, art - on the webpage to create an online extension of yourself. You can find pink, feminine profiles for girls who are friends with dark, gothic profiles who are friends with passionate sports fans who are friends with thugged out, hip hop profiles. Hence, the name MySpace. Research shows this is especially popular with high schoolers. On the other hand, Facebook does not allow for much customization. No matter how crazy you want your Facebook profile to look, it's not going to look much different than everybody else's. A standard white and blue background is the main reason Facebook has this quasi-professional brand image while MySpace is something you don't even want professional contacts to think you're on. There is another advantage to Facebook's standard background: load time. America doesn't have the broadband penetration of South Korea. Facebook pages consistently load relatively quickly. MySpace can be annoying in this respect. MySpace places full color ads and sometimes even video on many of its pages. Add the user's own videos, a song, and an intricate profile background and the page can take longer to load than anyone has patience for. I have sometimes clicked to view someone's profile and seen the screen go white, with only the webpage title in the top blue bar. I can tell it's not worth it and immediately click the 'Back' button. The success of Google over other search sites is obviously attributed to their superior algorithm technology of PageRank, but load time played its part. Their minimalist page allowed for faster searches. You don't need PageRank to find pizza in the neighborhood. If a consumer didn't have the fastest internet connection, he went to Google to find pizza as opposed to Alta Vista, Yahoo!, or Excite. There are pros and cons to the degree of customization allowed by MySpace vs. Facebook. However, in my experience, the novelty of creating your own personalized page wears off.

Although customization is a draw to MySpace, music is its primary appeal for me. In fact, I am listening to music on MySpace as I write this. I owe part of my MBA to MySpace for giving me free music while I conducted research, cranked out papers and developed presentations. You can find hundreds of thousands of musicians on MySpace from Billboard veterans to your local open-mic warriors. When I hear a song I must hear again, I look them up on MySpace and listen to it as many times as I want, as well as a few of their other selections. Some indie-artists have their entire catalog on MySpace - free. If an artist is in music as a career, that artist is on MySpace. Yesterday (April 3, 2008), MySpace announced the launch of a music service to rival Apple's iTunes. Although it came the same week that Apple surpassed Wal-Mart as the world's leading music retailer, many analysts believe MySpace could pose a threat. If MySpace does make gains against iTunes, it could gain a treasure chest to invest against Facebook. Likewise, it could also lose sight of the social networking front in favor of music.

As important as MySpace is to me for music, Facebook is equally useful for pictures. Hence, the name Facebook. Facebook has the most interesting feature of 'tagging' photos with your friends. For example, you can upload a picture of friends and tag each friend who is in the picture. Now that photo is available to view on their profile as well. The photo is available on the profile of each person who was tagged in the photo. This feature is crucial to me because I do not own a camera. Even when I did own a camera, I never used it. Before I lost it, I once went on a two week trip to Europe and never took it out of the suitcase. You can imagine how great it is to get pictures of myself with friends without ever having to take any. Sometimes somebody will tag me with a picture that I won't remember was taken. Whenever somebody asks for a picture of me or I need one for some reason, I go to my Facebook profile where I have access to my friends' pictures of me. Some people on Facebook, those who have lots of friends and always seem to find themselves in front of a camera, have over a thousand pictures available!

Facebook has, inarguably, superior functionality and use over MySpace. The code team and programmers at Facebook have developed a more efficient software than MySpace. This is not debatable. I recently threw a Going-Away Party for myself and publicized it as I always publicize parties - I invite everybody I know and see who turns out. It took more than twice the time on MySpace to invite less than half as many people as Facebook. Plus, Facebook had a feature to invite people who aren't on Facebook by using their email addresses. Performing every function - messaging, commenting, viewing pics, and overall navigation - is more efficient and faster on Facebook than MySpace. I am no expert in computer programming, but I can tell a better product when I see one.

It is ironic that Facebook enjoys a safer brand image because it is the site that gives me the most caution concerning privacy. Each site has privacy controls to allow users to lock their profiles to their friends, but they differ in how much privacy is afforded among friends. The home screen of Facebook is the News Feed, in which every user sees a list of stories concerning all of their friends. For example, John Doe is now friends with Jane Doe, or John Doe recently became a fan of this organization. Sometimes, I don't want what I do on Facebook to be broadcasted to every one of my friends and sometimes people who aren't friends. In its defense, Facebook has privacy controls over what is displayed about you in the News Feed. However, you cannot completely delete yourself from the News Feed. Plus, as a company, Facebook seems less concerned about privacy and has gotten itself into trouble more than once. Most famously, an outcry forced Facebook to retrench concerning a News Feed feature called Beacon. Beacon would publish news stories to your friends from external websites like eBay, Travelocity, Blockbuster, Overstock.com, and Fandango. The idea was to be the ultimate word-of-mouth medium. But would you want every plane ticket or book you buy online to be broadcasted to your friends?

I also have profiles I seldom check on LinkedIn and Orkut. LinkedIn is a strictly professional networking site which I wouldn't put in the same category as MySpace or Facebook. Orkut is the social networking website of Brazil. As I understand it, it is the only one that matters and every Brazilian is on it. I created an Orkut while in Brazil with the help of friends and I only keep it to stay in contact with those Brazilian friends. I have two interesting stories about Orkut. One is the 'Recent Visitors' feature. At the top of the home screen, Orkut tells you who has been to your page. This is a highly desired feature in America that many spam artists have exploited with the promise of the MySpace Profile Tracker, which to my understanding does not exist. It comes standard with Orkut and prevents any anonymous viewing of others' profiles. Another interesting story is a message I received on Orkut. From Margareth, it read "Hi... want to be my friend? You leave in America? Kisses Kisses Bye Bye." The beauty's profile didn't seem like spam and I noticed one of her 'Communities' was titled 'I LOVE GRINGOS' with a picture of Richard Gere in a tuxedo. Orkut seems to be exclusively in Brazil and, although Google owns it, doesn't seem to pose a threat to MySpace or Facebook.

Social networking websites are here to stay. MySpace came before Facebook and has over 225 million profiles! Lately, however, Facebook's momentum and buzz has eclipsed MySpace. When analyzing all the different features, I would think that a better product in functionality and long-lasting appeal would triumph. Facebook seems to me to be better positioned, but a lot can change in the war to be the king of cyber-social lives.