MySpace has long been the dominant social networking tool with a huge numbers of users, endless news stories surrounding it’s use as well as mis-use, and almost becoming a buzz word itself. Those days are eroding as MySpace loses it’s news coverage, and begins to become more of an annoyance then a benefit. Users are beginning to see enough reasons to move their online persona’s to other sites and Facebook has been working extremely hard and is poised to cut the head off the MySpace monster, and here are 10 reasons why:
- Clean UI Design
MySpace opened their UI to be changed by users using CSS and other code snippets into their profile pages, and thus opened the door to some of the most horrendous looking “spaces” anywhere. Facebook has maintained all their designs, and not opened themselves up to horrible design and keeping their site simple, elegant, and easy to use. - Clean UI Design…and no ability to change it
- Usability
One of the great things about Facebook when compared to MySpace is you can expect things to just work intuitively. Things act and react just as you would think they would. I know it seems pretty rudimentary, by often times MySpace tools fail for on reason or another without and valid explanation. The UI is much more straight forward which helps the users find and interact with the site more efficiently. - Reliability
I don’t know how many times I get random login errors on MySpace. I have tried for ages as well to check to see if the contacts from my GMail account are MySpace users using their built in tools and always get errors and no explanation. I have never had issues with either of these with Facebook. - No friend request spam
What nasty 16 year old tramp added me today? Yet another annoyance you don’t have to endure on Facebook. - …ability to add applications without dealing with HTML
The fact that Facebook can add functionality by just clicking a button makes MySpace’s adding HTML or code to your profile boxes seem about as efficient as shared hosting holding up to the “Digg” effect. - Portability (Mobile experience)
As better phones such as Apple’s IPhone are released and provide better mobile experiences this is going to become more and more important. Facebook is ahead in this department as well. - Willingness to Change
Facebook has shown the willingness to change and innovate when necessary. MySpace is usually far behind the curve if they ever get around to implementing features at all, and it’s really beginning to show. - Ability to pull together most or all of your online activities into one place
As users are getting more and more profiles online on different types of sites/applications, Facebook is making the move to allow you to incorporate all or most of that data into your Facebook profile. Bringing in your Photos, Music, Movies, Stocks, etc from other sites is something that is a great resource, and something that will be very important in the coming months/years. - No bi-weekly messages stating that we will not be shutting down, or telling how to block spam friend requests
All that needs to be said here is that Facebook is professional enough not to do this. In addition Facebook doesn’t have to tell you how to stop spam friend requests because they really don’t happen.By the way, doesn’t everyone love Tom and his photo of himself in a mirror?
Originally posted on June 11, 2007 @ 12:10 pm