I was about 12 years old when a kid on my block showed up with a Huffy freestyle bike. All he ever did on it was pop wheelies and try to bunny hop cracks in the street in our neighborhood. Somehow we all thought it was really cool. We sat on the sidewalk on our cheap crappy BMX racing wanna-be bikes and marveled at the stunt pegs and wheel covers.
Fast-forward about two years and my friends and I were pulling decades, riding vert and pretty much spending every waking moment doing stunts or crashing, usually both. We had real GT, Haro or Dyno freestyle bikes, we obsessed over the smallest detail, and the Huffy kid, still on the tank huffy, wouldn’t dare do a bunny hop in our presence for fear of looking like a poser. Yea, kids are mean, and we would have given him hell, but I was 14 man, let it go.
So what does this have to do with social networking? Well, if it’s not already painfully obvious, Myspace is the Huffy of social networks and Facebook is now the shiny GT World Tour, bright pink with some Skyway mags… man am I old.
Myspace had it all, the users, the vibe, the momentum and the world’s attention. The problem is that now, 5 years after it was founded, it looks largely the same, has the roughly the same features, and is buckling under the weight of spam, scams and bad press.
Meanwhile Facebook looks like the Cadillac of social networks attracting everyone from high school teeny boppers to my mom and dad! I can’t seem to find a demographic that isn’t at least somewhat represented on Facebook. 60% of my graduating high school class is on Facebook. Much of my family is on Facebook. It’s big, and it’s also clean, fast and stays out of your way.
Blocking contact from people you don’t know was a brilliant move and now people don’t feel bombarded on Facebook, they feel like they have the control. It’s nearly addictive to keep up with people you haven’t spoken to in as much as 20 years. It’s fun to see where everyone is, what their families look like, etc.
I wonder if Myspace’s ownership sees the errors of their ways. Surely managed differently, Facebook would have never had the opportunity to so completely obliterate Myspace.
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what happen with friendster ? some1 still login into this services ? after a thousand similiar web services reborn everydays ??
Excellent comparison. I can’t believe how huge Facebook has become. I think that its bigger than Ebay now!
In the near future there will be 3 mayor players, not just 2. myspace, facebook and mypepo
Yeah a new player is coming… mypepo.com it not only sounds very catchy got the looks but the features are Awesome!!!
If Facebook is Cadillac… What about BMW,Mercedez, Ferrari etc. MyPepo = all of those.