January 17, 2009

Facebook vs. MySpace
   by jhyde

I had a buddy set me up with MySpace last year. She gave me a password, uploaded photos to it, made me a decent looking default homepage, she even found me some friends to make sure I wouldn't be lonely in the new MySpace world. She did everything for me so I wouldn't have to lift a finger. I think I logged in twice. Once to add a couple pics, and another to check for anything new, just to see if I could get the hang of it. It never really caught on.

I had a friend send me an email to join Facebook a couple weeks ago. I had to do all the account set up myself. I even picked out a profile picture and added a couple buddies myself who I knew were facebook junkies. I was whole-heartedly addicted to it for like five days. I uploaded photos, sent out gifts, hearts, and privatized my profile so only my friends could find me. I was far more productive on Facebook than I was on MySpace.

I ask teenagers I run into which one they like better. MySpace is always the hands down response. They think it's more popular, easier to use, "been around forever" (if only they knew what the internet was like in the 80's!), and seem to get frustrated with Facebook because they "just can't figure it out". I kinda laugh on the inside at this response because from what I can tell Facebook and MySpace are structurally very similar, but what do I know? I'm just a usr out there.

Not surprising, Facebook seems to be more popular among the older folk, and in truth almost all the people that are my friends on Facebook are older. Now some of them have both MySpace and Facebook because they are just that cool, but not all of them and more and more people I know are just adding themselves into Facebook, literally in the last couple weeks.

So I'm not sure really which one is superior. On one hand, we have MySpace, a somewhat customizable homepage for thousands of people that shares photos. On the other we have Facebook, an even less customizable homepage for thousands of people that shares photos. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I say.

What do you think? MySpace, or Facebook? Same animals, different temperaments? Let me know.....

Published: January 17, 2009
Editor: stacy