As with most people, i’m obsessed with Facebook these days. But is it the best?
From a numbers perspective, MySpace is still the big dog. I read an article yesterday from danah about how Facebook is attracting more affluent, middle-class users whereas MySpace indexes higher for less privileged users. It’s a good read (article is here)
I also read today that Friendster is still hanging around. The top social networks in the world are:
- MySpace
- Hi5
- Friendster
- Bebo
Hi5 is a huge social network in Europe. I’ve heard from my Romanian friends that this is the go-to place for them. From what i can tell, it’s a pretty standard site. Bebo is a UK site that focuses on music, similar to how MySpace does. I think they’re a little more sophisticated in terms of functionality but they definitely haven’t hit it out of the park the way facebook has.
Friendster is a strange one though. It’s functionality is nothing special but it has been around for a long time and has lots of users. The problem is that it doesn’t have anything unique or special about it and there’s no reason to go back every day. It is less sketchy than MySpace but less cool than facebook. It rides somewhere in the middle. Social networking is such a large phenomenon that there is probably room for a player like this.
What do you think? What has been your experience with these sites?
