All Things Tech & Social

When people contemplate whether Facebook will be able to sustain its stronghold on the social networking world (in reference to the emergence of G+), the predictable and immediate response is “everyone thought MySpace was too big to take down but that wasn’t the case”. True.

The migration to Facebook from MySpace was quick (in a sense that after three years of existence from 2004-2007, Facebook took off in user numbers): everyone progressively started to drop Myspace and said “Hello Facebook!”. When looking back it does feel like it happened fast. Although this is the case, before we begin to assign the same “MySpace Fate” to Facebook, I believe it is important to recognize the different situational circumstances MySpace was in at its prime, compared to where Facebook is today.

• I actually never had a MySpace. I didn’t like it’s UI and felt the visual experience was clunky, fragmented and overwhelming, but this is how most people either felt or started to feel about MySpace and why Facebook’s appeal began to grow.
  
• It is also important to include the fact that Facebook users were “real” people and could easily be found and identified with their “real” names. The user experience was much more genuine and authentic to social interaction with “people you already know”. That was the key, and that was how Facebook “revolutionized” the social network experience. There was a reason to drop MySpace and say “Hello Facebook”. 
• Facebook offered a service that was far superior in social interaction, social sharing and social recognition. It was a better way to communicate and there was far less upkeep for Facebook compared to MySpace. Even when G+ goes public I could argue that it doesn’t offer anything to the “average user” that would make them leave Facebook similar to the way users left MySpace.
  
• When MySpace was at the top of its game it was not the utility that Facebook is today. The areas where Facebook has driven and advanced their product wasn’t in MySpace’s mental scope. My Space at it’s prime was a cool site with a few cool features. Facebook at it’s prime right now is becoming a dependent component of communication and interaction. They are two different functional operations.

Yes some people are frustrated with Facebook (privacy questions) but this frustration isn’t an overwhelming alarm that threatens it’s existence (i.e. MySpace child predator issues). Ultimately there really isn’t any reliability in comparing the two services because at their primes the mainstream application and personal utility were at two totally different levels: MySpace was a cool “site” that had heavy pop-culture and adolescent appeal, but Facebook is progressively becoming a form of strong communicative connection with growing social dependency.