It is no secret that social networking sites are the new face of the internet community; Facebook, long time collegiate networking website, along with MySpace, free-to-all stalker’s paradise, are now searching for ways to surpass the success and members of the other. However, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is now issuing a plea to all users and software designers alike to contribute new angles and facets to the site that seems to be slowly falling away from the frontrunner, MySpace.

Many users of MySpace are familiar with the vast number of options users’ have when they design their homepages; favorite music players, video clips, surveys, pictures, slideshows, information…you name it, and you can add it to MySpace.

Facebook, on the other hand, has comparably less “features;” every user is allowed the same single layout, in only one fashion, with no media capabilities or customization, save the content under each category. Interestingly enough, many users prefer the simplicity and clarity of Facebook to the much-cluttered and migraine-creating cacauphony of MySpace user layouts; however, the numbers still show MySpace ahead in the users race, with 67 million users trumping Facebook’s 23 million.

To make matters worse for the young CEO and his little organization, MySpace is not slowing its pace; both groups add hundreds of thousands of users daily, and MySpace has a sizeable head start.

To try to kickstart a run of success, Zuckerberg has announced Facebook is encouraging the public to design new and fun features to include in the popular networking site. Picture the Linux community let loose on Facebook; if you’re seeing what I’m seeing, it generally is only pretty to the Linux boys and girls.

What kind of custom features are we talking about here? The Washington Post documents one such feature in which a user’s iTunes playlist could be uploaded to the site, with their favorite songs atop the list; within social networks then, all the users could see what the most popular songs betwixt them all were. Whoop-dee-doo.

The Washington Post is also adding its own little contribution to the havoc, with a feature called “political compass,” which will let users know where they stand in regards to politics after filling out a short survey. Let me tell you, I was really struggling for a way to fill up my vast amounts of free time; now with this feature, I will be able to not only waste my time, but I’ll also know what the Post thinks of my political views! Hooray!

If you want all the fat cut away from this whole production, the short and long of it is that Zuckerman has realized what previously differentiated his project from MySpace is not helping him gain that coveted #1 seat. He hopes that allowing users a goody basket of time-wasting nothings (much like MySpace’s large basket o’ frivolous goodies) will make his site more appealing to the masses.

Will it really? Many college students have already been quite peeved that it is no longer a college student only site; it is now open to anyone and everyone, and not only that, students’ pages can’t be fun anymore…users have to be afraid what they load on their homepage is being analyzed by the government and potential employers. Nothing like the threat of an endangered future to really kill the fun of social networking, is there?

So now Facebook will be MySpace…but just a knock-off. Frankly, I rather appreciate the simplicity of Facebook’s setup, but I suppose we can all kiss that goodbye in a short period of time, what with political surveys, music ratings, and even *gasp* customizeable backrounds, backround music and video, and other meaningless nothings cluttering a once unpolluted environment.

Social networking sites are for those with too much time on their hands. If you find yourself evaluating your political compass, ask yourself if you’ve seen day light or physical activity in the last few hours; I dare say the people at MySpace and Facebook could do with a good round of…well…anything, even frisbee golf, to help aid their pale, vampire-like complexions.

A word of advice; quite networking socially and network physically. Try calling your friends, meeting them for lunch, or actually holding real events with the people in your social groups…believe it or not, they do exist in real life, and you might actually have fun! Now I’m off to stalk my friends’ walls for cruel-hearted posts about me they think will go unnoticed…

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 4:35 pm under Online video, Opinion.

Read more entries by Triston McIntyre.
Stumble It!