Facebook versus MySpace
I joined both networks within a few weeks of each other and proceeded to set up my profiles (Facebook and MySpace), add photos and make contact with ‘my friends’. The following commentary discusses the first few days on each network – rather than an extended experience of either – I’m just talking about first impressions now. I’ll be back with a ‘longevity’ review after a couple of months.
I started with MySpace simply because of the Google association. Google have rarely disappointed me in the past – so I expected MySapce to live up to myExpectations (ha ha). Sadly I was mistaken, clearly Google have nothing to do with MySpace other than advertising to its members and providing a handy search interface.
After entering all the relevant details I was presented with my home page – and let’s face it, it looks bad. Layout is shocking and it’s just as well you can customise your MySpace homepage yourself – because it’ll need a good working over.
In order to add my friends I had to go off and search for them, how tedious, where’s the import contacts facility which Facebook provide so elegantly? All I had to do was provide Facebook with my email login details (Gmail in this case) and it would go off and find existing Facebook members from my address book – I didn’t know I knew so many people already involved in the social networking phenomenon. From here it was just a case of selecting who I wanted to become friends with and Facebook took care of the rest, sending invites et all.
Adding my personal information into Facebook went smoothly enough, already impressed by the contacts import system I was eager to see what else Facebook could help me with. I uploaded a couple of photos which contained Facebook members and to my surprise was able to highlight these people in the photograph and link to their Facebook accounts! Visual networking like I’ve never seen it, it’s not just about words any more!
It seems that I can’t edit the look and feel of my Facebook home page – good or bad? I think it’s good – the interface is clean and easy to use and that means everyone else’s home page will also be easy to use.
Sadly MySpace is already falling by the wayside, I’m off to edit my Facebook account.
Now I need to join Google Groups to round off my social networking experience.
