Facebook sweeps the social networking scene, leaves MySpace in the dust

October 5, 2009

If you’re reading this, you probably have a Facebook. Chances are, most people you know have one, too.

Like many other Internet phenomena, Facebook began as a basic networking website and morphed virtually overnight into one of the world’s most frequently visited websites.

Much of the student body at Moreau is gradually migrating to Facebook due to the drought of communication on MySpace.

“It came to a point where I’d sign onto MySpace and absolutely no on would be online, so I think I was forced into making a Facebook,” senior Cindy Machado said.

With its booming online community, Facebook has been making valiant efforts to satisfy its users. The functional interface, thriving newsfeed, and addition of third party game applications are only a few reasons why Facebook has been an immediate success story.

“I think that people like Facebook because it is very interactive,” junior Sarah Creely said. “You can join in on any conversation you see.”

Facebook exceeds MySpace in new users with over 1 million signing up every week, adding to the whopping total of 50 million active users today, according to the Web trafficking site CrunchBase.

MySpace has also been on a steady decline due to its troubles in maintaining a solid user base. Many students and teens have noticed the lack of features and integration of user-friendly apps, and have departed from MySpace because of this.

“MySpace got less interesting because nothing new was being developed. It just became a boring everyday routine for me,” freshman Janelle Dela Cruz said.

The monotony of MySpace also lies within the housekeeping of HTML and the endless hours one wastes from refreshing the home page in hopes of a new comment or friend request.

Junior Sean Rodriguez feels that that slaving over his profile became mundane. “I’ve grown out of it,” Rodriguez said. “I was tired of decorating it and reading pointless spam and survey bulletins. With Facebook, you don’t have to worry about beautifying your page because everyone has the same layout.”

The excess of advertisements also added to the frustrations of many former MySpacers.

“There is too much intrusive advertising”, English teacher Kathleen Weltchek said. “Facebook doesn’t have pop-up advertisements like MySpace does. MySpace is less social and more commercial.”

Many students, however, think that MySpace still has a place in the realm of Internet titans.

“I don’t think MySpace will completely die out because people want to stay connected with their friends who don’t have a Facebook,” senior Allen Jerald said.

Countless students also think that MySpace dominates in a vital category of social networking that essentially keeps them alive: music. MySpace is consistently teeming with new artists and fresh music to accommodate the ears of those who want to stay up to date with today’s music.

“I liked how I got messages from artists wanting me to check out their music. I think MySpace is still standing because a lot of people still use it to look for new music,” senior Jun Oregana said.

In response to this advantage, Facebook has implemented a powerful photo-uploading engine, which many users are satisfied with.

““It’s really easy to share pictures. You have immediate access to other peoples photo albums and recent uploads,” English teacher Gretchen Tornabene said.

Currently, Facebook is the leader in photo-sharing sites with over 4.1 billion photos uploaded, eclipsing the photo-sharing powerhouses Flickr and Photobucket.

“The sharing capabilities Facebook has surpasses MySpace by a long shot. You can easily tag photos of people and even post personal videos on their wall,” said sophomore Hawa Foster.

In addition, the ease of use and simplicity of Facebook boosts its appeal even more with students.

“Finding friends, especially long lost ones, is much easier on Facebook than MySpace. I used to spend hours searching for and adding friends on MySpace,” freshman Kim Ly said.

Facebook developers have also introduced a simplified version of its site called Facebook Lite to accommodate users who only want to see their friends’ statues. The ‘Twitter-like’ set up makes it easy for one to update his or her profile on to go.

But Facebook, at first, was not created for everyone. Harvard student Mark Zuckerburg created the site strictly as a means of communication for the Harvard community and neighboring schools in the Boston area. Within several years, Facebook’s seemingly promising network had Internet powerhouses Yahoo, Microsoft, and Friendster offering to acquire the company for billions of dollars.

The real question is, will Facebook be the undisputed king of social networking sites? Or will it be another dying Internet fad?

“MySpace will die out sooner or later,” Creely said. “But I think that there will always be a new website that will attract people, so Facebook might be in the same boat [as MySpace] in the future.”

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