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MySpace vs. Facebook vs. Twitter
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Before MySpace & Facebook

Matt Cutts is the head of Google's webspam team. He is also usually Google's interface with the public, and runs a successful personal blog. He is very charismatic, funny, and intelligent. Matt faced a difficult problem over the last few years in figuring out how to control spam sites. Many people were able to create these senseless and informationless blogs and websites and were making thousands of dollars off of NOTHING. As the genius that Matt is, Google was quickly able to tweak their algorithms and prevent worthless websites (mostly blogs) from achieving excessive success.

I have quite a few questions for Matt Cutts, which he probably won't answer. How does Google treat words like Anti-Socialer, the word which I created below. Does Google treat it as a spelling error? Does my website get penalized because Google has never heard of such a word before? Do they ignore it? Anyways, moving on...

The need for blogs were basically replaced by social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter. Twitter, which is completely stupid and worthless will not be discussed on here.

MySpace vs. Facebook

What are they? Well, the simple answer is that they are both social networking websites. MySpace was started in the summer of 2003, while Facebook was started in early 2004. Both did not really become mainstream for at least a year or two. Today Facebook users outnumber the entire United States population. Facebook has taken off globally. Facebook makes reconnecting with lost friends, and maintaining relationships with current friends, instantaneous.

Today pretty much has a MySpace page or a Facebook page or both. Obviously, there are differences between the two concepts. Some people prefer MySpace and some people prefer Facebook. My opinion was that it was stupid to have two different social networking sites to keep up with. It is honestly amazing to me that they both took off at about the same time and while I believe MySpace was much more popular and mainstream in the beginning, I think Facebook is now winning the race. Facebook has just reached 350 million users. I believe this is also a much more accurate count of users than MySpace, though I do believe there are many non-active Facebook accounts inflating that 350 million user number. Though Facebook's countless glitches seem to piss a lot of people off, including myself. MySpace gets the win for smoothness in functionality.

MySpace doesn't purge or delete user accounts for an excessive amount of time, if they do at all, and we can only assume this is done to boost their "membership numbers". I found accounts on MySpace that had not been logged into for almost 3 years. MySpace was riddled with spammers in the beginning and although they have managed to curtail it, it is still a problem. Also, MySpace did a bigger tribute to DJ AM than they did to Michael Jackson, what is up with that?

Facebook's interface and implementation of the way everyone can interact with each other on their pages is amazing, they also keep it sleek and bandwidth efficient by eliminating the customization aspect of people's pages and the load on their servers. Facebook is more professional and not quite as high schoolish. MySpace's only edge over Facebook is by allowing customizable pages, but Facebook wins overall because it allows people to interact much better than MySpace. It allows people to interact with each other throughout the day. While much of the interaction may be unnecessary, it is always good to be able to laugh once and a while, or vent as some people do, though I would never air my personal dirty laundry online.

One thing is for sure, reconnecting with someone after 15-20 years can be difficult if they have a common name. I mean what are the chances of finding Linda Smith or Elizabeth Walker? This is an area Facebook could improve in. If people were able to enter schools other than High Schools, such as middle and elementary schools, more people would be able to connect.

Recently CNN published an article about "The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers". CNN actually left off two profile personalities which I have added below in red. Read the full article for the descriptions of their 12 facebook personalities.

The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore.
The Self-Promoter.
The Friend-Padder.
The Town Crier.
The TMIer.
The Bad Grammarian.
The Sympathy-Baiter.
The Lurker.
The Crank.
The Paparazzo.
The Obscurist.
The Chronic Inviter.
The Anti-Socialer.

The default for a facebook profile is to only allow your friends to see it. Apparently, there are many people who want to take privacy to the next level and are invisible to everyone. You cannot find their profile by searching for their name, and when they post comments on people's profiles, their photo does not show up. Their name is also grayed out so you cannot even click the link to their profile. In fact, even if your friends are friends with them, they do not appear in their friends list, and if you search for them by name you they will not show up. The only way you can find out anything about them is if THEY find YOU. What's the point? If you do not want to be found on a SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE, why did you even sign up? This personality describes the people you know whose profile is like a classified document at the CIA. You know it exists, but no one has ever seen it.
The Pushover.

This personality is relatively similar to the "The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore" personality. This person feels the need to comment on every single one of their friends status updates and photos. No one is going to take their keyboard away, but everyone knows exactly who they are. They are impossible to miss. The real question is how are you getting any work done while you are so busy reading and responding to everything that is going on in everyone else's lives. Some psychologists say that this person may lead a boring life and therefore overcompensates by excessively posting things in response to events in other people's lives.

Making Connections

Facebook and MySpace is about about connecting with people. Today a friend from High School who I reconnected with, after about 15 years of not hearing from them, posted, "I desperately needs a tall fencing solution for the yard. I just had 2 neighbors yell at me because my dog jumped the fence. One of them actually said "I'm gonna slit that dog's throat if he jumps that fence again" So, does anyone have any ideas? I'm thinking of planting bamboo... but that shit spreads fast. HELP ME! HELP MY DOG!"

Since my wife owns our fence company, I replied jokingly, I'll do it. I live 4 hours away, but our family still lives up there, so I'm taking the job. Social networking in action at its best.

Relationships are an important aspect of Facebook and MySpace.

Marketing on Social Networks

Obviously you can market your business through these sites. Posting real estate updates and spamming your own Facebook wall with hourly updates about your business is a big turn off to most of your friends. If you want to generate some traffic through a site such as Facebook, you should do pay per click. Facebook has advertisements on the right side usually, you can even give feedback on the ads as to whether they work and how well, which is unique. You can also target your audience demographically by age, sex, geographic region, and some more categories. This is another very unique feature to facebook. People can be so senseless and frivolous with their marketing dollars and not realize that cost control over advertising costs is essential to running a business. It is School of Hard Knock rule #102. If the return on investment is not worth it, save your money.

The average business will NOT generate much new traffic through a social network site, and honestly I don't even understand the Titter hype. Twitter SUCKS. If you don't give a shit what anyone else has to say, do you really believe that anyone cares what you have to say? Further, isn't your Facebook updates, the same concept as your tweets? Even though search engines are planning to incorporate your Twitter status updates into search engine result pages, realistically you will likely not rank well, and if you do, you will not stay at the top very long. A website or blog is the single best way to market your company and generate traffic to your business.

Social Networking Conclusion

Social networking is the newest fad. It is not going anywhere anytime soon. Social networking has replaced bulletin board systems, blogs, and the need for some websites. Some people prefer to have an alter-ego account. For example, their MySpace page might boast comments and graphics that they would not normally post on their Facebook page. Whichever social network you prefer, it is becoming clear that if you don't choose one, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. Social networking has basically turned all of us into bloggers. A blogger is person who writes a blog.

A new CNN article released asserts that pre-adolescent use of the sites, which some therapists have linked to Internet addiction among adults, could be damaging to children's relationships and brains. I am in total agreement with this theory. Children have absolutely no need to be Facebooking if they are not of the proper age. Parents have even allowed their children to falsify their ages in order for them to meet the age requirement to have a Facebook account. As a parent, I will not allow my child to participate in a social networking website until he is at least 13 years old. I have seen mothers that have allowed their children as young as 7 years old, have their own Facebook or MySpace account.

An old friend from High School, Sinic Staton, who I ran into on Facebook not long ago was attempting to raise donations to meet his goal of $3,500 to help cure childhood lukemia. I will admit that because of the current financial crisis, I was not inclined to donate, we just don't have the money. I saw Sinic Staton's posts on his Facebook wall and ignored them. Then one night Sinic Staton and I got to talking, and he asked me to donate, I said sure. By Sinic directly asking me, I waived any objections I had and gave $20. I then realized it was not so much about what I could do, but how many other people I could find to help him reach his goal. In the end I found 4 other people who contributed $150 more dollars to his cause. If it were not for the Internet and social networking, he likely would have not even come close to reaching his goal. It is through a variety of methods and mediums that he succeeded. Direct contact versus passive contact proved to be a huge factor in the results he had to raise enough money. I still played a huge part in making his campaign succeed. I helped give it steam down the stretch to the end when the deadline was closing in. That driving force to ramp things up is a part of my marketing style. It also felt good to be about something bigger, and hopefully make a positive difference in someone else's life.

One woman was stripped of her disability insurance when her insurance company discovered her Facebook page. They decided that her photos and comments were enough to prove that she was not clinically depressed.

Social Networking was also able to provide an alibi for one young man who was arrested by police for a robbery that he did not commit. After spending two weeks in one of the most heinous jails, Riker's Island, he was exonerated because he had updated his Facebook status at the time of the crime. Rodney Bradford trusted the INjustice system and voluntarily went in for questioning when police put him in a line up and he was incorrectly chosen. Another classic case of police literally allowing finger pointing to trample a person's RIGHT TO INNOCENCE. The justice system is bullshit and "Innocent until proven guilty.", is just a HOAX that too many people actually believe. I sympathize with Rodney, because I have been arrested and put in jail several times and then only later did police say, "Oops.". I didn't get a single dollar for my rights getting trampled, but I know what it is like to be in jail hopelessly wondering if the TRUTH will ever come out. I hope Rodney gets P-A-I-D as he should. Fuck the police.