Comparing Facebook with MySpace

Despite all of these facts and figures, however, MySpace is still by far the most popular social networking site, and that is a situation that seems unlikely to change in the near future.

All of the major community sites emphasise that their main function is to provide a means for people from all over the world to network with one another. It would therefore be fair to suggest that most of these sites have (as far as it is possible) tried to discourage and prevent people from viewing them as commercially orientated sites.

In other words, sites like MySpace and Facebook do not want their communities used by members promoting their products or services to other members. Despite the fact that it is owned by the Fox Corporation, even MySpace is no exception to this rule, and has gone to some lengths to prevent the site becoming a huge online auction or bazaar by another name.

Nevertheless, many smart online marketers and internet entrepreneurs have managed to promote their businesses, products and services through the MySpace site and community, and have made considerable amounts of money doing so too.

This being the case, many marketers are looking at doing the same with Facebook, and therefore we need to establish what similarities and differences there are between these two sites.  This will assist in establishing whether a similar business model to the one that is now all too commonly applied to MySpace will work with Facebook.

So, let us take a very quick look at how products and services are marketed on MySpace.

Effectively, and at its simplest and most basic, when you sign up for a MySpace account you will then build your own ’space’ which is a simple mini-website that tells the world all about you. In this ’space’, you would probably include full details about yourself, your interests and hobbies, perhaps pictures, videos, musical and rock band preferences, and so on.

The nature of the MySpace social network is that you are then expected to go out into the community and find new friends who have similar interests to yours.  You simply invite these people to be your friends and, as a natural part of this process, you would ask them to visit your MySpace mini-site.

From there, assuming that you are looking to promote a product or service, you would attempt to steer your new-found ‘friend’ to your blog or website, and it is there that you would be promoting the product or service in question.

This method of promoting a product or service by using the ‘invite a friend’ facility of the MySpace website has been very successful for the past year or so.  Indeed, it was so successful that some software designers created and sold MySpace ‘friend adder’ software programs that automated the whole process of inviting hundreds of new friends each and every day, and sold them to many eager would-be MySpace entrepreneurs.

The fact that this method of promotional advertising is now becoming less successful (as more and more people are becoming fully aware of the fact that their new ‘friends’ are no such thing!) is possibly one of the reasons that internet marketers are now looking at other options such as Facebook. 

The success of such a relatively simple business model does, however, hint at one fundamental difference between MySpace and Facebook that would suggest a directly comparable venture may not be so successful in the latter case.

MySpace is fundamentally a community for meeting new people; a way of networking to expand your social groups through access to an active worldwide community.  The concept of inviting dozens or even hundreds of new people to be your friend every day on MySpace is not seen to be in anyway strange or alien to the nature of social networking.

Facebook is fundamentally different from MySpace in this respect.

Because it was originally founded to provide a means of communication for old classmates or work colleagues, Facebook has grown up as a community that is focused on groups of people who already have some form of tie with one another.

Facebook is all about inviting members of your social peer group to become a member of the community, and then focusing on networking with them, rather than going out and ‘collecting’ new friends on a daily basis.

Whilst the recent demographic changes that Facebook has clearly enjoyed are inevitably going to change this picture over time, nevertheless, as it stands at this point, it is unlikely that the MySpace ‘business model’ would work especially effectively in the Facebook community.

Another factor to consider is a possible remnant of Facebook’s history as a site originally created for students of America’s top universities. That is, some Facebook users would probably suggest that using their community site for commercial purposes was maybe a little ‘tacky’ or perhaps somehow undignified.

This is perhaps best represented in the obvious dignity and pride that many longer-term users of Facebook still obviously take in being members of what was at one time a fairly exclusive community.  These people would very probably see something a touch ‘unsavory’ in having what they would see as ‘their’ community besmirched by commerce in the way that they seem to think MySpace has already been.

Thus, there is an established business model that does work for the leading social networking and community website, but it is almost 100% certain that the same model will not work with Facebook.

MySpace and Facebook are like attractive but non-identical twins - yes, they are members of same family, but thereafter, all similarities cease!