MySpaced Out

Having been in the web industry for over a dozen years now, I've kept careful track of online communities as they've developed. From the early days of BBS's, to message boards, to chat rooms, to networking communities.

As a comparison between MySpace and Facebook, I've come to the following opinions:


MySpace is a bit like Windows, a programmer's ugly design aesthetic with a greater potential for being hacked and abused.

Facebook is a bit like Mac, more simplistically designed with a well-considered color palette and a more rigid, built-from-the-ground-up programming structure.


MySpace is a place to BE, hence more attractive to teenagers, still desiring to create and project an identity. One's profile can be fully modified using CSS, to the point where it can be unreadable and crash your browser.

Facebook is a place to DO, hence more attractive to everyone. Facebook came out with the ability to add applications to your profile first, I believe, and opened them up to external developers. You can come back to Facebook daily, or several times a day, to use its applications. Your profile is not customizable designwise, so it performs its duty as a "networking tool" much better.


MySpace has the ability for a user to blog. Facebook does not. That's one thing I'd like Facebook to have, as an application.


I think MySpace has had to play catch-up since Facebook appeared, much in the same way that Friendster lost ground once MySpace came to be. MySpace added applications and the ability to update your status too, but the usability factor, the design, and the modular structure seems less intuitive and less appealing.

What's next? I don't know. Networking communities designed for a particular cultural niche (such as Uber.com and Pownce.com for artistic types) haven't caught on. Copycats like Tagged.com are ill-designed and too prone to spamming. Career-based sites are doing quite well, and LinkedIn.com seems to be beating the pants off of sites like Naymz.com and Plaxo.com.

Which sites am I on? LOTS of them. I'm an internet attention whore, keeping a careful balance of open-book lifestyle and attention to security concerns. Search for David Elsensohn or Polarbeast or DeadLounge or Dining in L.A. and I come up on the web a lot. I've been here a while.