MySpace has been in the news this week for various announcements made during the Web 2.0 summit currently taking place in San Francisco. And of course the Murdoch owned site still lays claim to being the biggest social network in the world, although Facebook is catching up fast.

This may be why MySpace is losing it’s grip: Five Reasons why Facebook will prevail over MySpace…

1. Privacy. On Facebook I control who adds me, who sends me friend requests, messages and everything else. And in turn I can only add or view the profiles of people who I know and still want to know me. No such luck on MySpace where any Tom, Dick and Pedo can try to make friends with me and send me bulletins. I don’t want that, I want to be free to add only those people who I didn’t stop ringing for a reason in the first place.

2. Applications. Okay, MySpace are about to try and fix this by allowing external developers to create applications but they are far behind Facebook which has had this option from the start. On MySpace you can add widgets to your profile but you need a thorough understanding of HTML to stop it screwing your page up completely. I have yet to have an application mess my Facebook profile up. The interface is so simple even children could use it, and they often do.

3. Design. Facebook has clean and simple lines, and a universal design not open to any changes. MySpace on the other hand has the ability to completely screw up your profile with badly designed templates and poorly sized images. And don’t even get me started on the moving gif backgrounds everyone seems determined to hypnotise me in to submission with. On Facebook, I can be guaranteed of knowing what I’m looking at on any of my friends profiles. On MySpace, it’s like Russian roulette, without the bullets but with eye piercingly garish colours instead.

4. Multimedia. Facebook kicks ass in this field with the ability to add photos, video clips, and quizzes about your interests without the need for Flickr, YouTube and countless other accounts. MySpace does allow some of this but again, you need to know what you’re doing before even attempting it. Also the ability to tag pictures on Facebook means the social network actually does what it says on the tin, letting you see people in pictures and adding them because you recognise the name even if you have forgotten the face.

And last but definitely not least:

5. Tom Is A Big Jerk. If you’ve never joined MySpace and made a homepage for yourself then you won’t have a clue who I’m talking about. Everyone else however will now be nodding along in agreement, with a slight smile on their face.

The Tom in question is Tom Anderson, President of MySpace and the guy with 205,932,875 friends at the time of writing. This isn’t because he’s massively popular and a great guy, but just because he is your first friend when you join MySpace. Well I have news for you Tom, I deleted you straight away, you’re not my friend, and I really don’t want you to be. There’s just something about the little grinning face in his picture, which by the way, hasn’t been changed in like forever, that makes me want to punch him.

And that is why Facebook will eventually prevail over MySpace, and take down all the other young pretenders with it. Feel free to disagree with me, but it won’t make any difference. MySpace may be monetarily worth a lot more than Facebook but it’s not as good in any way I can think of.

Related:

Facebook overtakes MySpace as world’s most popular social network

MySpace still beating Facebook and Bebo in to the dust

Bebo beats MySpace and Facebook in tests by computer experts

MySpace friend collector Tom Anderson started life as a hacker

Are you bored of Facebook and fed up with application spam yet?

Entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 6:37 pm under Amusing, Web2.0.  Print This Post

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