MySpace vs. FB & the Top Social Network Sites

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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:

  1. MySpace
  2. Facebook
  3. Hi5
  4. Friendster
  5. 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?

What's Going On this Weekend? Let's Talk About What Going In!

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Why go out tonight? How about 25 reasons why….

  1. If you don’t drink that booze, someone else will – now get off your ass
  2. Bad ass nicknames like “Chuggybear,” “The Alabama Hamma,” “Pukey McPukerson” are not awarded to people who stay home to do laundry (ahem: kmr)
  3. This is the one and only night your soul mate will wander into the bar. Seriously.
  4. Word on the street is the booze has been trash talking you all day.
  5. It’s far better to have a good time you won’t remember than a dull one you will.
  6. Remember your English high school teacher that you used to call “Mr. McTightass?” You are starting to remind me of him.
  7. How the hell can you walk around sober when you’re an insignificant speck in an infinite and uncaring universe?
  8. Churchill and FDR got drunk, Hitler didn’t. Need i say more?
  9. If you don’t you’ll wake up in the morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and who the hell wants to go through life acting like a goddamn squirrel?
  10. Your friends can’t have a good time without you.
  11. Or, even worse – your friends might have a great time without you.
  12. There is a 1000 percent better chance you will land a starring role in the upcoming Paris Hilton video Vegas Orgy.
  13. Your lawn is so much more comfortable when you’re loaded.
  14. That feisty barmaid might finally, you know, pick up on what you’re laying down.
  15. Are we down on this little place we call earth to have a good time or watch other people have a good time on TV?
  16. Your girlfriend has rented a bunch of chick flicks you can snuggle to – including Legally Blonde 3.
  17. If you don’t hunt the booze, the booze will surely hunt you.
  18. When you write your memoirs you won’t have to go through the hassle of making up a bunch of decadent adventures.
  19. Modern life is a shit storm and booze is the only umbrella without any holes in it.
  20. You did your goddamn monkey dance for the Man and now you get your monkey treat.
  21. The day will come when you will have to single-handedly face death, and there isn’t a person alive who can tell you what will happen next.
  22. Hemingway shot himself after being sober for two months.
  23. When your coworkers ask “What did you get up to last night?” you can smile all cool like and say “Maaaaaan, you don’t wanna know,” instead of chirping “I alphabetized my DVD collection and found out I have two copies of The Truth About Cats and Dogs! Two!”
  24. Remember your childhood dream of meeting a brewery heiress and jet-setting around the world on her dime? You think that’s going to happen while sitting in your goddamn apartment watching Planet Earth’s Shallow Seas?
  25. It’s so much easier to call up those your ex and explain exactly where they went wrong.

It's All About the Product – Yahoo! Makes a Change

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Yahoo! announced a change of CEO yesterday.  I love some of Yahoo! products like Flickr, MyBlogLog, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Maps, and Delicious.   When they bought Delicious, Google and Yahoo were neck in neck in terms of who had better products and a better vision.  Delicious opted to sell to Yahoo as they were better in social applications at the time.  Since then – for about a year now –  they’ve been getting their ass handed to them by Google on every front: Mail, Search, Calendar, Maps, etc.. They are just getting dusted.  Their products are no longer innovative nor even best of class.  I see this move as general frustration about this fact.  Jason Calacanis, an entrepreneur who speaks it like it is and is generally correct has a similar statement, saying:

“What this move shows is that–like Facebook, Apple, and Google–the founders are often times the best folks to run the business. Wall Street and investors are too caught up in the ‘professional CEO’ who knows how to ‘talk to Wall Street’ and get deals done. The fact is our business is about one thing: product.”

No One Belongs Here More Than You

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I just finished this book of short stories by Miranda July. The stories are both funny and sad.  The writing is great and the stories are very unique.  It’s an easy read and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Miranda wrote and directed the movie You, Me and Everyone We Know which was very quirky but still very good.  If you like indie films, i’d recommend you check that one out

Facebook Will Take Over The Web

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I’ve been a long-time facebook user. Dartmouth was one of the first 10 schools on the service in 2000-2001 and you could tell even back then that it was a special service. I’ve always thought it was the best social network – even as MySpace and others came around.

Facebook is a better services than other social networks simply because it has better features. Sure they have the same as a lot of sites, but they’re engineered better and they resonate with users MUCH more. Facebook features provide feedback, they portray status and most importantly, they’re social. Two of my favorite features on the facebook service are:

  • picture-4.pngPhotos. Supposedly this was the feature that spurned The Platform (see below). This feature is very similar to other services like Yahoo Photos, Photobucket, etc. except with one exception – it’s social. You can tag people in your photos and when you do it – that photo shows up in that user’s profile. In the past, if a friend of yours had a photo of you, this was never identified and you would never know.  Or if you see a person in a picture with your friend, you can see who that person is and click through to their profile. Facebook made photo viewing easy and made it social feature instead of just a way to enhance your profile. This caused the facebook photo sharing to be the most popular photo network on the web (or at least a close #2). Check out this article for details
  • News Feed. RSS is a simple concept. It is publish/subscribe. You subscribe to get information from certain sources and updates to those sources are published to you. RSS readers are doing this for the web such as Netvibes, iGoogle, MyYahoo, and the Google Reader (which is what i use). Just as your email inbox is a place for receiving mail messages, RSS readers are a place to receive messages from the web that you’ve signed up for whether it is a blog or a website. Facebook has an activity RSS reader called “News Feed” which displays any activity of a friend of yours on your home page. Most people don’t realize it’s RSS, but that’s essentially what it is and instead of delivering web messages, it delivers your friends’ activity. That is social and this feature alone is what makes facebook better than any other social network. It is great at telling you what your friends and network is doing and that is always relevant.  I also wrote about this a few weeks ago here.

Last week facebook came out with a new feature called F8 and also known as The Platform. This is a huge deal and it will change the web for millions of users. This feature allows any company to develop an application to live inside Facebook and makes it easy for any facebook user to install, share and use. With this feature, facebook is now a platform of users and friends available for any application or company to access. I repeat, this is huge. It has always been my thought that going forward social networking is a foundational attribute of the web. Any activity you do online – shopping, reading, watching videos – is enhanced if you can see what your friends are doing (or have done) and can easily share it with them. For any traditional site (BestBuy.com, Google Maps, Fandango, etc.), it could be much better if it was built into facebook and showed you what your friends had purchased, or had done, or what their opinion is. I already love using the flickr, netflix, delicious, and other facebook applications that have been created in the first week and i’m positive the quality will only get better.

To summarize – Facebook is a great site and similar to how Google went from building a great search product to building just great products (gmail, docs, calendar, maps, etc.), facebook is now on the path to go from a great social network to being an integral aspect of the internet. Also similar to Google, they are winning not just because of their vision but also because they are better at the subtle differences in their features and the overall simplicity of their site which makes the experience usable and enjoyable. Little things like auto-complete textboxes, slick javascript, and empty whitespace is why the site is so usable. Facebook is primetime now and it’s only the beginning.

Cool Site

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This is one of the cooler sites i saw this morning (CLICK HERE for it). It is very similar to how i begin my dreams.  When i go to bed at night and want to fall asleep, i often think of an area/object and then go inside it and then go inside that.  Before i know it, i’m fast asleep.  It was weird to see this.  Apparently i’m not the only one who likes to think about this.

Triathlons: The Beginning

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DSC01072This morning i took out my new bike (named: Commodore Williams) for his debut ride and did 20 miles around Hains Point. It was pretty damn fun. So fun, in fact that i just registered for my first triathlon which will take place on July 7. The distance: 1 mile swim, 27 mile bike, 5 mile run. So to recap, i don’t ever swim, i just rode today for the first time, and i have exactly 1 month to figure out how to do both really well. I find myself identifying more and more with the Hains Point Awakening statue (pic on the left). Whatever, bring it. Thankfully, i have a great adviser and jockstrap (i.e. athletic supporter) in Liz to guide me through it. (Also, did you know that they’re moving The Awakening statue soon? Wtf!)

A man was out jogging in the forest one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero.” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I’ll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want.” Again the man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.

Finally the frog asked, “What’s the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”

The man replied, “Look, I’m a Triathlete. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”

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