"Can I say you're my girlfriend on Facebook?"

Why did Myspace beat out Friendster? Was there really that much difference between the two? Was Myspace just a copycat that struck it lucky or is there some bigger reason?

MySpace had more features than Friendster. Blogging, etc.

Ya - I've noticed some odd worlds colliding within my friends on FB. may or may not be a good thing.

xpost

Matt has loads of hot girls on his facebook friends list.

the last few times i've logged into myspazz i've got the "sorry! unexpected error!" message - how can you love a site which fundamentally doesn't work, when a functional alternative which does exactly the same thing is available?

all my friends in one place = convenient. though it is apparently weird to want all your friends to be friends with all your other friends.

MySpace didn't really blow up until bands started using it but in the six months before that I think it did attract people BECAUSE it was messier/noisier than Friendster which was somewhat sober as gareth says and this is also true of facebook - the pendulum swings back.

though it is apparently weird to want all your friends to be friends with all your other friends.

idealistic yo

Lots of bosses are now turning up on Facebook, which has me checking out the tightness of that limited profile thing

i always make sure i have a cool boss who wouldn't take umbrage with anything i write on there.

i said this already but im reposting it--we had a lot of these myspace vs. facebook discussions upthread:

i dont like the idea of facebook getting all democratized and ugly like myspace (and having a ton of "entities" like companies/bands have their own profiles instead of just "groups").

keep it clean and efficient and fascist--and well-designed--and there wont be a problem.

yeah all the new companies and applications are a bit much. Tho I like having my last.fm on FB.

xpost democratized -> idiots like me (uni dropouts) being accepted?

CAn bands do pages now?

I hope not. I don't want to be a part of another MySpace.

i hope not

(they can do groups)

xp

it's not so much the democratization/opening of FB to non-students as the corporate presence, for me anyway. I mean, over time FB would be open to more non-students than students anyway, as more and more original 'book members graduate

i marvel at the stupidity of anyone who puts anything on their facebook/myspazz page which they wouldn't want their boss to see!

(or pity them if their boss takes serious umbrage to pictures of their employees drunk in their spare time)

I just took a look around to see if I could find any other people who I knew from my major. Besides feeling pangs everytime I saw someone listing their class as '10 or '11 (mine is '96) I was amazed at how many listed their dorm and ROOM NUMBER as their residence. I could see this without even being their friend. Madness.

Besides feeling pangs everytime I saw someone listing their class as '10 or '11

hi dere

yeah but ms. misery, most schools allow you to find your classmates' room numbers via their own website. facebook isn't really providing any information that isn't already out there and accessible, and it actual has much better privacy controls than most schoolwide student directories.

I have to say I like Facebook for putting me back in touch with a Russian friend now teaching English in China (strange but true).

xxxxpost by democratization i mostly meant the insane "customizability" of myspace pages which allowed 12 year old idiots the ability to make their pages entirely unreadble

the applications don't bother me because at least facebook requires them to be designed within the parameters of the site's general aesthetic.

i dont know why everyone uses ilike instead of last.fm tho

you can block all requests from bands etc. and you can also disable the automatic music player.

Yeah, it just annoyed me that it was so bound up with the idea of shilling shit bands

<i>myspace and facebook seem to have very different motives - fb is more for connecting with people you actually know (or used to know) while the 'spazz is more for meeting new people</i>

'xactly. i've never even considered myspace, and doubt i ever will. iresisted facebook for some time there, despite getting invites from increasingly unlikely mates ... i finally gave in and have already found myself in contact with a dude i was friends with when i was six or seven, and haven't seen in the best part of 20 years. so it's been worth it for that alone. plus various other people from my past who i like, and am pleased to be able to keep in some form of simple contact with.

stet's right about the limited-profile thing, but hey. it's really simple: if you value your privacy that much, don't, umm, post shit about yourself on the internet. at all.

FB is very much the bourgeois ex-student social network of choice, innit? it's totally exploded among my meeja chumz in glasgow and london in the last fortnight. maybe it'll be a passing fad; i dunno. right now i just like the fact that it's a really good way of keeping up with a shitload of old friends.

(fuck: IT dude just came round to tell me the server was back up and stood staring at a collapsed browser window [1] with "can i say you're my girlfriend on facebook?" plastered across it. christ knows what he thinks i'm up to.)

[1] mac OS 9, since you ask :(

xxxxxpost

Our directory doesn't appear to do so. Also you have to know someone's name to look them up in a directory and you don't see a photo. Kids be dumb.

man... it took a lot of time and effort to make my page entirely unreadable. :(

you have to know someone's name to look them up on facebook, too...

I actually stay in touch with people more regularly through MySpace, which unlike most of creation I really have no problem with (though a lot of that has to do with Greasemonkey making things very handy for me). That said others prefer Facebook more, it's whatever works.

xpost

That's what I'm saying . . .I just did a search for my major and hundreds of people came up. I could see their name, photo, networks or whatever and residence. Most people just had something like "Austin, TX" but some had "Blanton Rm 406". Dumb. I didn't know them or their names. Yes I'm part of the same University network but that's not hard to join.

or their friends' name

2xpost

at my college, a "facebook" was like a telephone directory except with PHOTOS of everybody, and the whole point was to find the deets of someone you'd only seen at a party, or somebody cute in your english lit class that you were too shy to approach

i see no indication that Facebook can be used the same way, in fact it seems like it functions in the opposite way: the only people whose details are accessible are people you already know! bo-ring

FB is very much the bourgeois ex-student social network of choice, innit? it's totally exploded among my meeja chumz in glasgow and london in the last fortnight. maybe it'll be a passing fad; i dunno. right now i just like the fact that it's a really good way of keeping up with a shitload of old friends.

it's the way it acts as a social diary which makes it potentially more than just a fad/way to pass time at work - it's really handy for planning anything from meals out with four or five people, to big parties, to even holidays - all the details on one handy page rather than a mass email which gets lost in the inbox. and this is why people are joining up, too! they don't want to be out of the loop.

fb also put me back in touch with someone from The Past, who i'd had no other way of contacting, which is really brilliant and more than myspazz ever did for me.

I am up to four or five 'I've added you as a friend on Facebook...' mails a week now.

i dunno, i think youre mostly being paranoid ms. misery. all this shit is out there for the dedicated stalker even in facebook's absence.

Tho I like having my last.fm on FB.

yes! but that's about the only app I currently like.

I think MySpace put me in touch with too many people from the past. Once all those weirdos find me on FB I'll probably abandon it too.

FWIW when I was in college we kept in touch by carving messages on rocks and leaving them at the creek where everyone washed their tunics.

xxpost, perhaps I am being a bit paranoid but there is something to say about young people being too trusting of the this technology.

i have pseudonyms because i don't wanna be found! srsly facebook sounds like my worst nightmare.

i dont think its a question of trusting the technology so much as trusting yr classmates/friends. fwiw id say its mostly a minority of people who actually have their addresses/dorm rooms in those fields (or who keep those fields updated)

yeah I'm kind of all "if I'd wanted to stay in touch with you, I would have just stayed in touch, thxbye."

that said, I've had a couple of repressed memories track me down on that god-forsaken myspace. hahahawesome... :\

xpost

You are probably right. But for cute blonde Jenna over in Carothers dorm it could be all I'm in ur room sniffin ur panties and explioting ur fresh young credit.

yeah I'm kind of all "if I'd wanted to stay in touch with you, I would have just stayed in touch, thxbye."

a lot of the people from eg school whose company i've most enjoyed recently are the people i didn't really get along with at school, while a lot of my actual friends from then who i've conscientiously kept in touch with, i now find quite awkward to communicate with. gosh what a torturous sentence that was. but anyway, gist of it = people change, and the people whose company is pleasurable and useful now aren't nec those you expect, and nor should they be

meh... i'll take the risk.

I'm really lousy at keeping in touch with people, so something like Facebook might turn out to be useful for someone like me. As I said upthread though, seems like not many people I know are on it anyway.

i see no indication that Facebook can be used the same way, in fact it seems like it functions in the opposite way: the only people whose details are accessible are people you already know! bo-ring

Not true, you can look up the details of anyone at your university who chooses to make those details public to the entire university (most people do)

Like I just said to my colleague, my social network works perfectly well on email

xpost but the point is that where with the paper facebook you found the picture to get the name, with online facebook you need a name to find the picture

You really can't beat rocks.

yeah I'm kind of all "if I'd wanted to stay in touch with you, I would have just stayed in touch, thxbye."

i totally agree. i can think of only one person who i've lost contact with that i would like to be in touch with again.

the kind of myspazz profile you have tends to dictate the kind of people you meet. i don't actually encounter that many weirdos; i only accept friend reqs from people who make the effort to write me an interesting msg; and i periodically cull my friend list of people i haven't stayed in contact with. and srsly, i've met some absolutely awesome people thru 'spaz that i wouldn't have otherwise encountered.

that's true, although there are WAYS xxpost