Facebook VS MySpace

Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Founded on February 4, 2004, it was created by Mark Zuckerburg. Originally created for only Harvard scholars, Facebook stretched over more well known colleges and universities in the Boston area within two months. Soon afterwards, Facebook was being used from people around the world. Over three years later, Facebook has become one of the most visited websites on the Internet and has millions of users.

Stats:

Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Founded on February 4, 2004, it was created by Mark Zuckerburg. Originally created for only Harvard scholars, Facebook stretched over more well known colleges and universities in the Boston area within two months. Soon afterwards, Facebook was being used from people around the world.  Over three years later, Facebook has become one of the most visited websites on the Internet and has millions of users.

Stats:

Active Users: Over 50 million

Monthly New User Average: 4 million

Daily New User Average: 200,000

Page Views: Over 15 billion per month

Searches: Over 500 million per month

Search Index Size: 200 GB

Largest Networks: London, UK (1,673,636) and Toronto, Canada (944,832)

Traffic Rank: 7th

Photos: 1.7 billion (which averages to about 44 photos per user)

MySpace is another social networking website. It has been more popular than Facebook in the past few years and has higher user averages than Facebook. MySpace was created in August 2003 and was used by employees of eUniverse, a publicly traded Internet company. The company held contests to see who could sign up the most users. Soon afterwards, MySpace became very popular!

Stats:

Accounts: Over 200 million

Daily New User Average: 230,000

Let’s compare both and see who is better than the other.

ROUND 1:

Layout: Facebook wins here because the profiles are well set up, organized and easy to navigate. Most MySpace profiles are ugly and inconsistent.

Overall Site Design: When compared to Facebook, MySpace looks amateur. Facebook is obviously the winner in here.

Profiles: We have a tie in this category. MySpace has a lot of customization while Facebook has a better default look and is neater and well organized.

Customization: MySpace and Facebook tie once again. While Facebook lets you add and remove applications, MySpace lets you do whatever you want with the page, if you know a little HTML. That’s why MySpace profiles look so disorderly, though.

Site Organization: Both are pretty well organized but Facebook wins here because of its clean layout that allows you to find everything right away.

Round Winner: Facebook

ROUND 2:

Pictures: Facebook wins here because of its neat picture section and the ability to tag people and to have people to tag themselves.

Videos: This one is a tie because both MySpace and Facebook let you upload video and they both have their own flash player. MySpace allows you to embed videos into your profile but you can post videos to Facebook as well.

Music: MySpace wins here since it is easy to place full songs in your profile. If you download the iLike application in Facebook, you’ll only be able to add clips of songs to your profile for free.

Round Winner: Facebook

ROUND 3:

Relationships: A big difference on Facebook is that the friends that you add are really your friends. It’s not a contest like MySpace, where people try to have the most friends as possible.

Groups: Both sites have groups, but Facebook makes them more well-known. They are a big part of the service and there are a lot of people using them for productive uses like planning meetings and giving info to fans. Many people who run businesses or websites have groups while others make groups just for leisure.

What’s New: Facebook beats MySpace by a mile here! On MySpace, the only way to see updates on you or your friends profile is to go look for it yourself. Facebook, on the other hand, notifies you when there is in an update.

Messaging: This is a tie since both have a place where people can leave messages and a basic mail system.

Co-Workers: Facebook is a perfect tool to communicate with people who you work with. Users can join networks of their company to see what’s going on. MySpace was mostly designed for teenagers so it doesn’t have these kind of features.

Round Winner: Facebook

ROUND 4:

Adding Friends: MySpace wins here because you can add any amount of friends in one click. In Facebook, you must go through a longer process just to add a friend individually.

Search: Surprisingly, Facebook wins in this category! Even though Google is the search engine for MySpace, it is very hard to find exactly what you are looking for. If you type in a name, you can find a profile with the name in it, not the actual person you were searching for. Also, Facebook’s search engine is smart enough to know if you are looking for a user or a movie in someone’s interests.

Navigation: MySpace and Facebook both have decent navigation, but Facebook beats MySpace if you’re searching for a specific person’s profile due to its superb search engine.

Privacy: It’s really easy to hide information from certain people and it takes just a second. MySpace has privacy options but aren’t as good as Facebook’s.

Round Winner: Facebook

AND THE WINNER IS… FACEBOOK!

For questions and tips, e-mail me at sean@whatsupwakefield.com