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MySpace is over. Facebook is next.
Interesting article from globeandmail.com :
Social shift
IVOR TOSSELL
Globe and Mail Update
MySpace is over. You can forget about it; it's done with. I mean, it's still out there, and millions of people are still using it every day, but that's not really germane.
The crowds have moved on to something new -- something cooler and less mind-blowingly ugly. The social networking game is all about Facebook now.
Facebook isn't new, either, but it's only been open to the public for half a year. Started in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, it was originally reserved for university students. In September, Facebook threw the doors open, putting it in direct competition with MySpace.
And while MySpace seems more and more like a ghetto for teenagers, Facebook is making inroads among people who were in school a decade ago. Right now, there's more talk than ever about its potential as the next multibillion-dollar takeover target.
Its basic idea isn't new. Users start with a profile page, which includes a mug shot and some basic details, and then need to build up a list of "friends," by searching the site for people they know.
This process can take weeks, as decades' worth of acquaintances -- all of whom, apparently, are now on Facebook -- crawl out of the woodwork one or two at a time, asking to be linked as friends.
Once you're signed in and networked, the site keeps you busy. Users can send Facebook messages to friends (as if you needed another inbox to check) and leave messages on each others' profile pages. They can post blogs, form clubs, invite people to events and hound them for RSVPs.
They can upload photos -- especially photos of themselves holding a drink, holding a friend, holding a friend with a drink or all of the above. An ingenious feature lets people match faces to names, which the system fastidiously catalogues. It's a bustling, immersive web-within-the-Web.
In concept, it's similar to MySpace, and many other networking sites before it. But in practice, the experience is markedly different, and not just because Facebook has that many more features. In fact, a lot of Facebook's success can be attributed not to what it does, but to what it doesn't do.
To begin with, it cuts users out of the design loop. It seems to have learned from MySpace, which gave users the freedom to customize their pages any which way; they responded with design inspirations that ranged from NASCAR chic to the Las Vegas strip.
The result was a post-aesthetic wasteland of blinking, honking, neon things; photos that cascaded down the page, animated baubles and all manner of widgets. If you didn't have junk on your page, there would be some on your friends' page, and you would be shamed by association.
Facebook, on the other hand, looks downright respectable, and that's because it gives users no say in the matter. Every page on the site has the same simple blue-and-white look; everything is structured, with the photos put neatly in one place, blog posts in another, and so on.
Now that there's no question of embarrassing yourself with your page's design, you can focus on embarrassing yourself with its contents.
Which brings us to the second thing that Facebook doesn't do: pseudonyms. MySpace, like virtually every other site out there, lets users pick a nickname. Sometimes, users pick nicknames that correspond with their real names, but just as often, they're totally abstract. Facebook, on the other hand, wants names -- real names, first and last.
And that might be the most genuinely innovative thing about Facebook. Anonymity or, at least, the option of anonymity is one of the Internet's most entrenched conventions, even if its effectiveness has been steadily eroded over time. Facebook throws down the gauntlet and asks people to dispense with anonymity entirely -- and people have responded.
(Facebook, of course, can't guarantee that there's no tomfoolery going on, but it tries. While trying, for research purposes, to register a Facebook page for a small stuffed animal, the system repeatedly told me that "Horse" is not a legitimate last name.)
Inevitably, Facebook walks a fine line on privacy. One of its most compelling features has raised hackles: Unless you instruct the site otherwise, every change to your Facebook profile is broadcast to your list of friends.
If somebody identifies you in a photo -- even if it's a photo you didn't take or upload -- everybody gets a message saying so. If you change your relationship status from taken to single, the breakup is announced with the help of a little broken-heart icon, just in case you weren't sure how you felt about it.
The service is audacious that way: It asks its users to live publicly. There's something refreshing about its frankness. Sites that allow pseudonyms, like MySpace or your blog of choice, give an impression of privacy when really there is none. Whatever is posted on your page is there for the Facebook network to see, with your name attached.
This is Facebook's day in the sun.
Just remember that it's transient, too. The site is so immersive, so demanding, that it's hard to say how long its new members will have the stamina to keep feeding updates into it. It's geared for the university lifestyle, but young crowds have no allegiance, and reserve a special antipathy for things that were cool five years ago. It will have its legacies -- most notably, a generation that's comfortable with living online under their real names -- but sooner or later, Facebook will be over.
webseven@globeandmail.com
Social shift
IVOR TOSSELL
Globe and Mail Update
MySpace is over. You can forget about it; it's done with. I mean, it's still out there, and millions of people are still using it every day, but that's not really germane.
The crowds have moved on to something new -- something cooler and less mind-blowingly ugly. The social networking game is all about Facebook now.
Facebook isn't new, either, but it's only been open to the public for half a year. Started in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, it was originally reserved for university students. In September, Facebook threw the doors open, putting it in direct competition with MySpace.
And while MySpace seems more and more like a ghetto for teenagers, Facebook is making inroads among people who were in school a decade ago. Right now, there's more talk than ever about its potential as the next multibillion-dollar takeover target.
Its basic idea isn't new. Users start with a profile page, which includes a mug shot and some basic details, and then need to build up a list of "friends," by searching the site for people they know.
This process can take weeks, as decades' worth of acquaintances -- all of whom, apparently, are now on Facebook -- crawl out of the woodwork one or two at a time, asking to be linked as friends.
Once you're signed in and networked, the site keeps you busy. Users can send Facebook messages to friends (as if you needed another inbox to check) and leave messages on each others' profile pages. They can post blogs, form clubs, invite people to events and hound them for RSVPs.
They can upload photos -- especially photos of themselves holding a drink, holding a friend, holding a friend with a drink or all of the above. An ingenious feature lets people match faces to names, which the system fastidiously catalogues. It's a bustling, immersive web-within-the-Web.
In concept, it's similar to MySpace, and many other networking sites before it. But in practice, the experience is markedly different, and not just because Facebook has that many more features. In fact, a lot of Facebook's success can be attributed not to what it does, but to what it doesn't do.
To begin with, it cuts users out of the design loop. It seems to have learned from MySpace, which gave users the freedom to customize their pages any which way; they responded with design inspirations that ranged from NASCAR chic to the Las Vegas strip.
The result was a post-aesthetic wasteland of blinking, honking, neon things; photos that cascaded down the page, animated baubles and all manner of widgets. If you didn't have junk on your page, there would be some on your friends' page, and you would be shamed by association.
Facebook, on the other hand, looks downright respectable, and that's because it gives users no say in the matter. Every page on the site has the same simple blue-and-white look; everything is structured, with the photos put neatly in one place, blog posts in another, and so on.
Now that there's no question of embarrassing yourself with your page's design, you can focus on embarrassing yourself with its contents.
Which brings us to the second thing that Facebook doesn't do: pseudonyms. MySpace, like virtually every other site out there, lets users pick a nickname. Sometimes, users pick nicknames that correspond with their real names, but just as often, they're totally abstract. Facebook, on the other hand, wants names -- real names, first and last.
And that might be the most genuinely innovative thing about Facebook. Anonymity or, at least, the option of anonymity is one of the Internet's most entrenched conventions, even if its effectiveness has been steadily eroded over time. Facebook throws down the gauntlet and asks people to dispense with anonymity entirely -- and people have responded.
(Facebook, of course, can't guarantee that there's no tomfoolery going on, but it tries. While trying, for research purposes, to register a Facebook page for a small stuffed animal, the system repeatedly told me that "Horse" is not a legitimate last name.)
Inevitably, Facebook walks a fine line on privacy. One of its most compelling features has raised hackles: Unless you instruct the site otherwise, every change to your Facebook profile is broadcast to your list of friends.
If somebody identifies you in a photo -- even if it's a photo you didn't take or upload -- everybody gets a message saying so. If you change your relationship status from taken to single, the breakup is announced with the help of a little broken-heart icon, just in case you weren't sure how you felt about it.
The service is audacious that way: It asks its users to live publicly. There's something refreshing about its frankness. Sites that allow pseudonyms, like MySpace or your blog of choice, give an impression of privacy when really there is none. Whatever is posted on your page is there for the Facebook network to see, with your name attached.
This is Facebook's day in the sun.
Just remember that it's transient, too. The site is so immersive, so demanding, that it's hard to say how long its new members will have the stamina to keep feeding updates into it. It's geared for the university lifestyle, but young crowds have no allegiance, and reserve a special antipathy for things that were cool five years ago. It will have its legacies -- most notably, a generation that's comfortable with living online under their real names -- but sooner or later, Facebook will be over.
webseven@globeandmail.com
Comments
Don't have Facebook.
Don't really care.