Yes I am now on the facebook. I finally gave in when I couldn't see pics from the cool-tastic party I thew last weekend. I find it cumbersome and narrow.
The only problem being... it's a superior environment. The one unique benefit MySpace has, giving users wild ability to customize their pages, is also its greatest weakness. Remember when every page on the internet had flashing images and yellow text on navy backgrounds and MIDIs playing on loop? That's MySpace.
It's purple text on tiled black images with emo playlists forced on you at load. It's unreadable script fonts in lavender. It's long comment sections filled with 'sparking' animated gifs.
Facebook only allows you to customize based on your information and uploads. There's no noise, visual or otherwise. You can easily find specific things about any of your friends, once you learn the interface enough to know where to look. As a web developer, FB is even more impressive to me, as they have very slick and polished AJAX behavior.
All this conformity results in higher usability and better user retention. In social networking, as in online dating, the primary strength of a site is user base. An easier to use site will gain more users. In June of 2008, Facebook passed MySpace in worldwide uniques, and had nearly double the pageviews. Six months later, FB had doubled in size. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/facebook-now-nearly-twice-the-size-of-myspace-worldwide/) That's a heck of an uphill battle.
Granted, MySpace is still larger in the US, but not for much longer. (The article predicts 2010.) The entire MySpace exec team just got tossed because Fox realized the site was spiraling. My prediction is that the new team will change/remove the ability to customize.
You can call me a fanboy, but remember... I've been to security trainings with some of the MySpace guys. (They're pretty nice, actually.)
1 comment:
The only problem being... it's a superior environment. The one unique benefit MySpace has, giving users wild ability to customize their pages, is also its greatest weakness. Remember when every page on the internet had flashing images and yellow text on navy backgrounds and MIDIs playing on loop? That's MySpace.
It's purple text on tiled black images with emo playlists forced on you at load. It's unreadable script fonts in lavender. It's long comment sections filled with 'sparking' animated gifs.
Facebook only allows you to customize based on your information and uploads. There's no noise, visual or otherwise. You can easily find specific things about any of your friends, once you learn the interface enough to know where to look. As a web developer, FB is even more impressive to me, as they have very slick and polished AJAX behavior.
All this conformity results in higher usability and better user retention. In social networking, as in online dating, the primary strength of a site is user base. An easier to use site will gain more users. In June of 2008, Facebook passed MySpace in worldwide uniques, and had nearly double the pageviews. Six months later, FB had doubled in size. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/facebook-now-nearly-twice-the-size-of-myspace-worldwide/) That's a heck of an uphill battle.
Granted, MySpace is still larger in the US, but not for much longer. (The article predicts 2010.) The entire MySpace exec team just got tossed because Fox realized the site was spiraling. My prediction is that the new team will change/remove the ability to customize.
You can call me a fanboy, but remember... I've been to security trainings with some of the MySpace guys. (They're pretty nice, actually.)
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