MySpace vs Facebook

MySpace vs. Facebook

The controversy between the two sites is nearly an impossible one to actually come to a conclusion about. I have been on both a lot the past few days and the question of which is better is a futile battle that is somehow important to many people.

One of the main reasons people like MySpace is because of the users ability to personalize their accounts. If your favorite color is green and you want the entire world to know that you can make your whole page glow with the most obnoxious green you can find. To some people this is the main reason to use MySpace, to others this is the reason to stay away. The neat and trim formatting of Facebook is quite an attraction to some. In MySpace the profiles can be hard to navigate around, in Facebook you know where everything is and what it all does with little exception.

It’s hard to judge the sites based fully on popularity. While MySpace has over 110 million registered members(making it more popular by Facebook by far) it’s hard to know how many of the accounts are even used. On average only about 50% of the account on MySpace pick up any activity within a 30 day period. Also on MySpace there are band pages, groups, people with multiple accounts and other accounts not linked directly to a particular user. Is this necessarily a bad thing though? If my computer were better I know I would spend a lot of time looking through the band pages and the like. The application of music is what draws a lot of people into MySpace to begin with.

There is little argument as to which site is more secure. You know when your prude friend sends half the people on her list a link to “come see my boobs!” she is a victim to one of MySpace many hackers. Almost everyone’s account has been hacked into at some point. This doesn’t seem to happen often in Facebook. It is also hard for MySpace to escape it’s reputation as an online predator congregational revelry unit. The stupid 12 year old girls who post pictures of themselves sucking off popsicles in their bathrooms get themselves in trouble flirting with psychos. Just because MySpace has a history of stupid users doesn’t automatically make every user a 12 year old whore. MySpace does have some bad reputations fallowing it around but from my own experience I can say that it’s not hard at all to avoid that kind of MySpace scene.

For those of you that have had MySpace for a number of years, you know it has slowly been adding applications making it more appealing to Facebook users. One of the main draws Facebook once had was their format of keeping up photos. Unlimited photos are now a part of the MySpace set-up as well. Also MySpace adopted the function of photo tagging a while back which was another lure Facebook possessed. Photo Albums were also added, replicating the arrangement of Facebook.

Many people would argue that the news feed on Facebook is far superior to that of MySpace. Most Facebook users have spent a large amount of time at some point just waiting to see when someone comments on the same photo as you or waiting for someone to comment on their status update. It’s true that you can keep tabs on other people’s activity on Facebook. This may or may not be a good thing. I personally don’t like my comments to someone being posted on everyone’s news feed, but it is an appeal to many people. On MySpace you can chose which of your friends you want to receive a news feed about. On Facebook you receive a constant update of what everyone is doing.

As I see it the two sites are slowly turning into each other. More and more people feel the drag towards face book as it grows in popularity. That’s why half of us got a MySpace right? We don’t want to be left out of the fun. But now the competition is growing and the two sites take bits and pieces of the other to make it easier for people to choose their sites. Soon enough they’ll be the same site with different names. Or.. The same site all together. FaceSpace, Spacebook, MyFace.