Facebook Geek vs. MySpace Glam
Published by Rodney Rumford October 21st, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook News.
I was reading an insightful article by Brian Braiker in Newsweek last night. The Newsweek article goes into some great detail about the differences of the 2 social networks: MySpace and Facebook. Facebook embraces developers, MySpace does not. I have always said that MySpace is more DNA centric around music and entertainment. Facebook is all about connecting to people that you already know (and some that you might want to know based upon common interests). The other major difference is that facebook helps me discover and share meaningful content much easier (quite passively I might add). I was quoted in the article.
The differences between the 2 sites is massive once you get past the easy (and inaccurate) comparison of them as social networking sites. I suppose that a comparison of the 2 sites warrants a 3-5 page blog post… coming soon. 
The bottom line here is that there are many philosophical differences behind how the sites view themselves and their users. How these philosophical differences manifest itself is becoming ever more obvious. Facebook openly embraced third party developers (which contributes to the value of the eco-system); MySpace is not so enthusiastic (this goes to a mindset of old school media control in my opinion).
Here is a short excerpt from the Newsweek article about Facebook and MySpace:
MySpace, the 800-pound News Corp.—owned gorilla, made three major announcements this past week—two of which served to underscore a deepening fundamental difference in philosophy from its closest rival, Facebook. “MySpace is Hollywood and Facebook is Silicon Valley,” says David Card, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research. Or you could put it this way: MySpace is glam; Facebook is geek. Not that there’s anything wrong with either.
Kyle Brinkman, vice president of product development of the social network(MySpace), wavered slightly in his enthusiasm for third-party development. “I do think there’s a place for widgets and add-on applications,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “But where we see core propositions for our users, that’s where we want to build services ourselves.”
Which means MySpace is thinking like, well, an old media company. “They may be creating some big synergies for partnering and monetization, but I don’t think it’s really revolutionary thinking at all,” says Rodney Rumford, a consultant and publisher of FaceReviews, a blog that tracks and critiques the network’s applications. “Where Facebook has a great advantage in the long term is the ability not to serve me ads based on what page I happen to be on, but through my behavior. It knows what groups I’m in, it knows my behavior and it knows my friends.” How they end up doing that remains to be seen. But as far as users are concerned, it increasingly seems to make sense to belong to both: one for your music fix and the other to keep tabs on your friends.
Read the full Newsweek article on Facebook VS. MySpace here.
Technorati Tags: facebook, myspace, media, facebook news
If Facebook had a good music sharing player that stayed with us through our travels among apps and profiles, there would be NO reason to be otherwhere. If I’ve missed it somehow, Please let me know.
It’s interesting to revisit the article a few months later, especially with all the application spam on Facebook and the resulting drop in numbers earlier this year. But they seem to be rolling with the punches and handling it pretty well. Too bad MySpace is so unwilling to do the same.