I was not into any of the above, or Twitter, until yesterday, when I saw that a long lost and dear friend was reachable via Facebook. Signed up, got sucked in.
I seem to recall that MySpace was kickin Facebook’s ass a year or two ago, then it switched and I’ve heard it said that more people access the internet via Facebook than Google.
So why? Usually momentum is hard to fight. Is there a widely accepted explanation or is it just one of those things that everyone has an opinion about and no one really knows?
MySpace was originally intended as a way for bands to promote themselves, but somehow got caught up in general social networking. Though to be fair, it was pretty much the only site doing anything remotely like it, at first.
But it wasn’t designed for that purpose, which its interface and back-end clearly proves, as it’s an unholy unworkable mess that needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch.
And that was also its downfall, especially as the rapidly appearing alternatives like Facebook were designed better, and for the express intent of social networking, meaning every part was specially built to promote that.
Also, facebook started out originally for only college students back in the day when it first came out. So that’s how it started, via word of mouth/usage on certain campuses only. It had a slight exclusivity to it, and then suddenly the next HUGE wave was when high schools were allowed into the club, and that brought it up more by the people who weren’t in college but wanted into the site, and then the next big wave was when pretty much anyone now can join facebook, and they brought in all the applications/games/ and random features.
Each time they basically opened up facebook to a new group, making it less exclusive and allowing more people who couldn’t join to suddenly be able to join in. I still preferred the old facebook, and wish it was still only for colleges and alumni as a way to maintain social networks via that, but it is what it is.
I think GuanoLad explained it well.
It seems that it has a lot to do with design. MySpace allowed you to effectively design your own Web site, which was actually kind of cool in that it allowed you to put up backgrounds, videos, music, pictures. The problem was that a lot of people were really crappy designers and their pages were a mess, tough to navigate and not very pleasant to look at.
Facebook has a nice clean design that still allows a good degree of personalization but without a radical alteration of the basic look.
It was a repeat of what happened back when everyone was creating their own AOL or Geocities web site. At first it was really big, but people got tired of the flashiness and glitter, and wanted something that stayed inherently functional.
Another thing that happened was that Facebook was the first to implement Apps. So even if you didn’t want to socialize, you could go to Facebook and play games. Myspace was slow to add this, just like they were slow to add a Lite version that kept the social functionality without the distraction.
Myspace is still somewhat popular with a certain crowd, but that’s the people who want to design their own pages more than they care about having people they know hooked on. Most people have moved on to other places for design, like deviantart. And all the kiddos have moved to social networks designed for them, like MyYearbook.
What bugged me about the old Facebook was that it was difficult even for legit alumni to join. I still can’t join my undergrad’s network because I don’t have an email address from them anymore. I can get one though the alumni association, but then I’d have to actually join the organization and pay a fee.
Locally, sites like Bebo ruled the roost for a while but facebook has destroyed it, AOL paid some ridiculous amount for it in 2008. Even for bands and the like myspace has become a ghost town.
I agree totally. Another issue was kids would get on high Internet connections at school and the library and make something that looked cool but took forever for the average person to load.
I like Yahoo360 a lot. The key there was they would allow you to design a page, but the view had the option to toggle off your design to the bare minimum and it made the pages load quick.
Friendster still is the leader in Asia still. More than 90% of all it’s traffic and accounts come from Asia. Friendster says: The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India are the top ten countries using it.
I think a lot of these sites start out really cool, but eventually they have to pay for themselves and that is hard to do. So if they don’t get bought out by a big time operation the person running it can’t keep with it.
Are you positive you need to paid the alumni fee? My two colleges (undergrad and grad) allow me to have alumni emails and I promise you, I paid no fee. You might want to double check that.
I got rid of Myspace because it was drama. The people I had as friends were always blogging about their terrible lives and how FriendX was being a jerk or whatever. I didn’t want to associate with people I had grown away from. I didn’t want to keep up my blog anymore. I didn’t have any fun on Myspace. Sure, I could have defriended all of my friends, but I just ditched and went to FB. I told a handful of people I still liked that I was moving over and that was that.
I would hesitate to click on someone’s Myspace page because of the load times with all the stuff they stacked on it. Facebook had no such problem. Any wonder why FB got bigger?
P.S. I’m near to getting my masters degree and my graduate institution has already announced that we can keep our email addresses - with a monthly fee.
Wow. That’s a shame. I guess I didn’t realize I was lucky. I just discovered that my undergrad institution no longer charges for official transcripts. Wahoo.