The Space v. The Face: it doesn’t make sense.

I’ve changed my habits lately.  I’ve finally started using MySpace and I’m rarely on Facebook anymore.  This is mainly because I just wanted to try out MySpace… prove that pages don’t have to be ugly, also wanted to download some free songs.  What I’ve found is that I really don’t think any MySpace-Facebook comparrisons make any sense.

Facebook seems to be supporting my general thought about the distinction - that it is more of a LinkedIn than a myspace - through it’s recent moves to add limited networks at large employers.  FaceBook seems to be going more for a “this is what I’ve done” and “this is where I am” focus rather than the MySpace focus of “this is who I am.”  The problem is that FaceBook’s users haven’t really figured this out.  I believe that most of them view this as a social tool to post pictures, leave messages for friends, and put jokes in their profiles.  Truly it is little more than a glorified aim profile.  There’s nothing wrong with that but that’s probably not the direction FB would like to steer its users. I believe FaceBook is trying to move away from “the place to keep in contact with the girl you hooked up with” and move towards “the place you keep your professional and actual educational contacts.” Personally I think this is the right move, I don’t think FB can last forever just on being a cool website that a lot of people are using.  It needs to morph into a tool that people can actually use for some life purpose.  Otherwise it’s the next abercrombie - everyone on campus is doing it for a while and then it just gets a little old.

MySpace on the other hand is strictly personal which I think makes it likely to suffer a Friendster type fate.  The main advantadge is the Music that will help keep it around as long as MySpace can keep the musicians happy. Personally I like it because I like hacking up CSS, others just stick templates in, and that’s fine, but there’s some scary stuff on MySpace. Flexibility is nice, but also seems to make it hard for the site to do upgrades.  If MySpace changes its core code most templates would not work anymore.  That fact seems to make it something that people are likely to get bored with. I don’t know I’ve been using it and have to think that it’s not as bad as everyone claims. I even reccomend that someone that I know in the entertainment industry set up a page - it does have its role.

What both are lacking is real interaction - and this palopia promises.  We’ll have to wait and see, but I’m pretty skeptical.  Even after the valleywag interview.

Lastly, Sphere (blog search) launched today - it’s pretty good. I like how the profiles of the blog work, but then again I always like useless statistics. I first heard about this a long time ago, and it was worth the wait - hopefully this will crank up the innovation in the blog search industry.