Facebook is a Dinner Party - MySpace is a Rave
Published by Rodney Rumford December 27th, 2007 in Facebook.Facebook is a Dinner Party: MySpace is a Rave. I have finally found an analogy to explain the differences between facebook vs. myspace that people seem to immediately grasp. I may show my bias and age; and for that I do not apologize. I merely have a strong preference for one over the other. Facebook is more useful on many levels.
MySpace is a Rave
Lots of loud music
Visually overloading
Anarchy and chaos reign from a design perspective
People are not always who they say they are
People are lurking in the dark corners
Lots of strippers
A much younger demographic
I am thinking someone might slip something in my drink
It is difficult to have a conversation
3 times as many people here
You might hook up with someone
Facebook is a Diner Party
You know the people that invited you
They are your real world friends
You might meet mutual friends here
You can have an actual conversation
You can learn more about a persons interests easily
People will break off into groups for discussions
People are who they say they are
Lots of people in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s.
You might end up playing games together (Scabulous or Jetman)
Dare I even say a higher class of users (with more disposable income)
You can network and expand your connections with like minded individuals
I can share fun things with my friends
You might hook up with someone
A more private setting- less people
I hope this analogy helps people that are new to the social networking sites grasp the radical differences between the two. I have had a MySpace page for a few years and a facebook page for over a year. The differences are huge. In my mind they are only somewhat similar from the perspective of people are gathering in one specific place online.
Facebook & MySpace are social networking sites and that is where most of the similarities end. What do you think?
Technorati Tags: facebook, myspace
To carry the analogy further - Each FB app is an entree plate and the person to the right and left of me keep passing me too many plates, most of which I don’t want, but every once in a while I see an entree I like and put it on my plate.
Great analogy, Rodney. Makes lots of sense to me - I get a headache every time I even look at the home page of MySpace as it’s so darn busy.
I never did do much with my own profile over the years either.
Mind you, there are a lot of professionals and celebrities on MySpace - don’t know how active they all are - so it’s maybe not quite a rave to them.
But on the dinner party side, sometimes a (large) excitable dinner group can turn into quite a cacophony… that’s the extraneous notifications, requests, pokes, etc. I call visual noise. I tend to hit the ignore button 90% of the time as Tom indicates.
With all of my work collegues getitng on Facebook, I have another analogy for you. The old skool networking sites like LinkedIn are like meeting up with people on the floor of a trade show, and Facebook is like getting drunk with your collegues after work - every day.
G’day Rodney - your analogy is spot on. Probably the easiest way to describe it to my non-techie mates as well (although I wonder how many of them will then go for MySpace…sigh…)
Cheers,
Thomas