[lbo-talk] My Space vs. Facebook, race and class distinctions

Matt lbo4 at beyondzero.net
Tue Jul 28 07:06:06 PDT 2009


On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 09:02:01PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Facebook looks good and MySpace looks like crap. Am I saying the same
> thing in a different way?

There are clear technical differences that facilitate the difference in experience. MySpace pages are incredibly slow to load; they were the first of the social networking sites to reach that number of users and allow for such a degree of customization, but the execution was piss-poor.

I recently logged back in to MySpace to delete my account and was shocked to see that they had tried to copy much of Facebook but still managed to execute it in such a way that pages were still ridiculously slow to load. Facebook is a better designed site, with better community support (e.g., the Facebook Purity script for the Firefox Greasemonkey plugin automagically hides all of those stupid surveys and quizzes), and the integration with other sites is better-executed. When I update Twitter from Spaz and append #fb, it automatically updates Facebook. On my profile, you can see what Netflix movie I have [had out for 6 months and will probably send back before I ever decide] to watch, what music I have been listening to (scrobbled for Last.FM), etc. It is so very Dorktastic! :-/

Matt

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