FaceSpace or MyBook?

You heard it here first.

FaceSpace (or MyBook) is the merger of MySpace and Facebook, two individual social networking web sites.  I have an account on both.

I like MySpace because you can edit and use HTML coding to make it individual.  You can post html rich messages and I credit MySpace to my expertise in web development.  That is, until they began violating Net Neutrality and forced it's users to use it's own servers for hosting images, video and other links rather than the ones the user prefers.

Since the News Corp $580M purchase in 2005, MySpace has become the largest social networking site on the Internet.  It has also become an advertisers dumping ground.  I'm sure it's revenue has increased exponentially, but the quality of the domain has has declined inversly.  It was the new sacrificial virgin to the News Corp monster.  With MySpaceTV and MySpace Music and exclusive MySpace celebrity interviews, it's become less of a social network and more of a gossip magazine.  I'm sickened by it and if I had any other network to keep in touch with past acquaintances, I'd drop MySpace in a mere second and not look back.

Facebook, on the other hand, is much cleaner.  However, with all the applications that can be added to a profile page, it's becoming less and less "clean."  It should be noted that from here on, I will refer to these applications as "spapps", Spam Applications.  The reason for this: you can't install, open or use an application without being bombarded with demands of inviting all your friends to use the application as well.  It's unwanted and therefore, just like so many other unsolicited messages I get, considered "spam."  In fact, some spapps, like some games, won't allow you to achieve certain levels of the game without successfully recruiting bullying large numbers of friends to use install the application as well, even just once.

The reason for this rant is that MySpace has jumped onto the spapps bandwagon.  I found, or rather, a friend showed, me a "Texas Hold' Em Poker" application, developed by Zynga for Facebook, on MySpace.  It's the exact same application.  MySpace is mimicking Facebook.

Even though Facebook has retained their independence, it hasn't kept them from jumping on the excessive advertising bandwagon.  In part, Facebook isn't exactly to blame for it.  I blame the developers of each application who incorporate invasive advertising schemes.  On the other hand, Facebook documents all sorts of information about a user.  Where they live, which groups they're apart of, how often they log in and which applications they use just to name a few are the kinds of data they keep track of and sell to advertisers and developers.  A practice that is on the border of privacy violations.  Are they allowed to keep a users Internet habits documented and stored?

In short, each is borrowing ideas and implementations from each other and incorporating them into their respective domains.  I see it as a form of sexual reproduction.  Each gives a little of themselves to create a mutated, inbred, muck-of-a-social-network.  Eventually, you won't be able to tell one from the other.  Which will become ... wait for it ... FaceSpace!  You heard it here first.

Technorati Tags: Facebook,MySpace,network,applications,merge,FaceSpace