Battle of the Networks!

I have recently being paying attention to my old Myspace account after much neglect and disinterest caused I think by the preponderance of Facebook as the international and local social network of choice. I reckon that most or certainly a lot of people use both. When I first left for Korea folks in Ireland used to use a social network site called Bebo but that got crushed by the Facebook wave. Myspace certainly suffered in popularity and if I’m not mistaken has mostly being functioning as a website for bands, individuals and organisations that are unable to create a website. This is where I think Myspace held a small advantage over Facebook – Myspace of late has been a place for people with something (whether it's bullshit or not) to say.

Facebook however operates as a place for people with nothing to say and something to say. I’ve blabbered on both social networks and I’m not sure which one is more successful or reaches more people or has more people listening. In a sense, Myspace’s advantage here is its blog function which allows people to follow and participate and it sends out an email any time something is posted. Facebook hasn’t bothered with this function but revels in the lunacy of it’s status updates that seem to take control of the world sometimes – at least they seem to take control of my world especially when I go through phases of thinking of my life’s actions in status updates and how can I make the simplest and most inane action sound wittier in a status update. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

Since the introduction and rise of Facebook, Myspace’s star has slowly sunk. Facebook is gradually, like Google, becoming not only a noun but also a verb (and probably in time an adjective and adverb but don’t ask me how that will work). It’s advantages are clear; lots of shiny and fun applications and games to waste more of your time, easy photo uploading, groups and more groups, events easily created, and of course most important of all the ability to copy and ‘share’ with other people.

Myspace was plagued from the start of Facebook’s no nonsense blue and white website that denied users the choice of how they wanted to present themselves leaving the ubiquitous profile picture to reign supreme (I’ve written about it before here and here,). Complicated HTML editing and competing websites offering to ‘pimp-your-profile’ that took a while to get the hang of and, personally speaking, I was never happy with what the end result was. There was also the speed it took to open a person’s page if they had videos, pictures… I used Myspace with broadband and it still seemed to take a week and I can imagine how happy people with dial-up internet felt about the affair. Facebook’s quick and efficient use of direct links to websites and the speed it takes to open the almost colourless webpage left Myspace dragging its heels in the mud.

But it is changing. Myspace is catching up. All the advantages Myspace had before are still there but it is now approaching Facebook’s market, the people with nothing to say. I’ve been looking at a number of the older features and I have to admit it that a lot of them have been updated and made a lot better. Myspace now has a chat function, a Java quick-uploader for photographs like Facebook. It now provides its own templates for profiles but still offers the HTML editing version that makes it still very unique and personable. The profile page look and home page look are more interesting with more links and more streamlined edges. What made Myspace unique, a space that was yours, has been redesigned to fit with the ultra-sleek and competitive internet environment of 2010.

Does this make any one better than the other. Yes your Myspace home page and profile page will look a lot nicer or prettier or cooler or sophisticated than the bland white and blue of Facebook but essentially they offer the same thing. Your friends, people you might know, the constant and endless stream of things friends have done and said; these are all in front of you whenever you sign in.

But Myspace’s strides and advances over the past year have been significant to warrant attention. Facebook can share the world (for want of a better term) but Myspace have seemingly invested a lot of money in their links with celebrities and music personalities. Both directly competing with each other for attention but only one is growing at a rate that seems to want to take over the world.

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This little account has been an attempt to try and assess the competition between the two. I don’t know how much competition there is between the two, I notice that the same people who use Myspace and Facebook for publicity use both as much, it’s probably in their best interests for publicity’s sake.

But what seemed like a dead horse, now it has actually gotten up and continued on with the race building on its own strengths in an attempt to win back some of the attention taken away by the worldwide phenomenon of Facebook. In the end I don’t really think it matters if there is a winner or a looser but that there is an option. With the growth of the internet options will never cease but at the top of the scale it’s nice to know that you can make the world pink around your profile picture if you’re fed up as being the same as everyone else.

Think about it – as people we are all different. If we want to be cool with cool pictures around us (remember the posters on the wall when you were a teenager and in college?) why shouldn’t we express it that way? But while your deep in agreement, why not think about it on the global scale that we are all human (incidentally maybe white isn’t such a good colour for a universal profile colour) and that what is on the inside is more important than ‘skin’ colour. Or am I looking into this too much?