Myspace VS. Facebook

            It seems like it was just yesterday when Myspace was the rave. Users could customize their own backgrounds, add music and videos and write on each others’ pages. Yet with the rapid growth of Facebook, there have been many controversies over the layouts and designs of the two social networks. Though they are both social networks there are many similarities and differences between the two sites.

           On Myspace every profile page follows a predefined structure, which makes it easy for users to get used to. MySpace allows the user to change both design and content on the profile page. The profile pages you can add videos, move graphics and add different fonts, text-sizes and colors to create your own page.  On the other hand Facebook uses a well-balanced design plan, with an obvious choice of color, the white and blue. The layout of Facebook profiles are well set up and neatly organized and it’s easy to navigate through the profiles to find the information you want.

         Both MySpace and Facebook let you upload videos and they both have their own flash player. MySpace will let you have a video on your profile but you can only post videos to Facebook. On MySpace the only way to know if a friend added something new to their profile is to go look at it, and the only way to know if you made a new friends is to look for the person. Facebook has two feeds. One tells you what’s new with you, such as who accepted your friend request or your posted items, etc. The other feed tells you what’s up with all your friends, like who they added and what groups they joined. They both have a place where people can leave messages on your profile and they both have a basic mail system.

            One of the major reasons for joining a social network is to reconnect with old friends or classmates. Facebook makes this really easy because the whole site is organized by schools and mutual friends.  MySpace lets you search for school friends, but doesn’t put the emphasis on real friendships. Facebook makes it really easy to hide info from certain people and to not show information that you want to be kept private. So, if you only want your close friends to see you contact info, it only takes a second. MySpace has privacy too but it is much more complicated. 

           Even though they are both commonly used social networks, on the outside they may seem like like they have lots of things in common, but when you dig deep into the layouts and the minor details they are quite diverse.