Facebook vs. MySpace

Facebook has long been known as a social networking site where friends can connect with other friends, find long-lost friends, keep up with family members, or even befriend their favorite teachers. But is Facebook becoming like MySpace? MySpace has been a huge success in the United States for the past few years, but recently it seems to have lost steam to Facebook. MySpace users can customize their profiles with cool backgrounds and can upload music to play when other friends visit their page. MySpace originally started as a way for unknown bands to promote themselves. However, it seems that everyone and their little sister have a MySpace account. Due to recent scandals involving children using Myspace becoming targets for predators, as well as various problems with viruses, MySpace is a close second to Facebook, which has gained traction.

Facebook users don’t have as much flexibility with their accounts. They cannot “personalize” your profile page with shiny text or live music streams. But despite all this, Facebook users seem to be quite happy with the format. Facebook’s design gives a more professional feel to the atmosphere, which was once open exclusively to students enrolled in various universities and colleges. Today, however, Facebook is available to anyone, but some fear that changing the rules to allow anyone to join will lead to the ultimate demise of Facebook. There’s also been some recent controversy over the sharing of people’s personal information and the fact that it’s never really “deleted” after someone deletes their account. While Facebook has temporarily fixed some of these issues, it is still under the scrutiny of its millions of users.

According to some, Facebook is not becoming like MySpace. MySpace is less professional. It’s something for kids and aspiring musicians, some would say. Whatever the case, one thing remains true; Facebook and MySpace are social networking sites whose primary goal is to connect people, and that’s exactly what they do. On a personal note, if it weren’t for Facebook, I probably still wouldn’t be in regular communication with many of my friends that I went to elementary and middle school with. This does not mean that he is a bad friend. It’s simply that as we get older, our lives take on new meaning; friends move away and people have lives of their own. What Facebook and MySpace do is reconnect people who want to reconnect. Now, anytime you want to “check on” what your best friend is doing on the other side of the world, you can log in and check their status. You can leave a message to your friends, upload a photo of them or invite them to a party. The possibilities are endless. Contrary to what many people may believe, I believe that Facebook (when used for its original intent) is a great way to connect and communicate with friends. However, nothing will replace face-to-face communication or even hearing someone’s voice over the phone, but for those of us who live in other states or other countries, Facebook and MySpace are great options to have around.