There have been several occasions recently where I’ve contributed to conversations about Facebook and its place on the web. The general starting point for these discussions begin with the question of whether it is turning into that “one place” that everyone will end up calling their social networking home on the web — the pivot location of all online communication and networking. While I cannot foresee the market stake it will hold even a year into the future, I’m starting to feel like I understand where Facebook stands and why it is fundamentally different than it’s commonly compared neighbor MySpace.
Many continue to reference Facebook as the “new MySpace” but that is not a fair statement to make. Facebook seems to be approaching things in a completely different way. It is trying to become a hub of all things social. Not a hub like a Google where all of your data lives and is displayed only on Google, but rather a hub as in a place to collect little bits of information from all your other online presences and to pull them into one starting place for you on the web. It’s a place your friends can come to connect and identify relationships with you and then come back as frequently or infrequently as they want to get updates on little “bits” about what you’ve been up to lately. Facebook makes it easy to browse networks based on friendships, interests, personal information, and now through any number of methods using their applications platform.
MySpace
MySpace, on the other hand, seems to be in its core designed to provide an easy way for young people to push information about themselves with very little structure resulting in a massive influx of bulletins, blog posts, profile comments, and randomly placed content on profile pages. The generally younger audience makes sense when viewing the site in this way because it lends to younger peoples desire to be heard loudly among friends and peers. It is more of a communication platform rather than a networking application.