I’m really not sure, I’ve heard it touted around for the last few days that Facebook is the new MySpace, personally I quite like both of them but I think both have different approaches – here’s my take on the two of them!

MySpace

MySpace some how seems set in the teen ethic, I was speaking to Glenn the other night and he said “Isn’t MySpace just a CMS for the masses?“, he wasn’t aware of it’s social networking side, and maybe that’s MySpace’s biggest problem – too much control.

If I browse MySpace I do so with my speakers completely off, why? Because once I open my third tab (as a Firefox user I will use the tabs to my advantage) and three different peoples user profiles tunes are hammering out simultaneously I realise:

1. That I’m definitely still tone deaf, and
2. why I didn’t consider a career as a DJ.

That’s just it, people can edit their profiles, their music and generally make a complete hash (or visual masterpiece) of their user profile – they can tweak and tinker to their hearts content – some of the profiles I can’t even read because they burn my eyes with their psychadelic colours!

What MySpace does have that isn’t so easy in Facebook is the ability to make new friends, search for someone, read their profile (so long as it isn’t set to private) and learn about them, engage in a chat etc. etc. I’ll come onto how Facebook handles this in a moment, but it really is about making friends on MySpace (and if you’ve got friends already you can add them too!).

Facebook

Facebook has been around a while, but has only recently opened it’s doors completely – personally I really like it. It’s networks and groups have allowed me to get in touch with several old faces within a matter of days! It’s interface is clean and business like, not cluttered and there’s some great technology behind it (particularly the photo tagging!).

I do however, have a couple of grumbles at the minute about it!

1. I’d like to join my old University’s network – I can’t, simply because I don’t have an email address currently at that University, current students who register and then leave will remain members, but us oldies won’t!
2. Because of the above point, I’ve setup a group for members of my old department at the University and was asked straight away “is this group in competition with the real one”, it appears there is another group (which I couldn’t see until I was given the direct link to it), this group is only available to members of the University Network (again see point 1, which I can’t join!). I think it will become a haven for us oldies and already those that decided not to continue with engineering!
3. I can’t see anyone’s profile unless I already know them – now that’s just a PITA, because the photos are so small when you’re searching for someone, often I’m not sure it’s them! If I could see some other detail about them I’d know if it was the person I was looking for!! It also makes it difficult to find people with common interests (unless you meet them via a group). I guess this all does give an element of security, but it seems a little limiting (maybe not so when I consider Mystique‘s take on MySpace and Facebook being good internet stalking grounds – I guess this blog and the business are the easiest ways to find me though!) .

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve ranted a bit about Facebook but I really like it – probably more than MySpace.

They’ve just released Facebook Marketplace as discussed by ProNet Advertising, which tepid brute seems to have had some success with!

I think Facebook probably has more potential to grow as a social and business network (somethink like linkedin?), if you want to add me at Facebook I can be found here.