Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.07.2007, Blaðsíða 8

14_RVK_GV_11_007_OPINION
When browsing through the curious realms of the Inter-
net, many find the need to partake and express them-
selves in the online world of abstract rules. While most
of us do not have the skills to make our own websites,
others get paid to do just that. Since the Internet became
an open media for the public, many different ways of
web communication have been born. The IRC was very
popular a few years ago, and blogging has become
quite the necessity. Not everyone likes to blog though,
most people like to stay in touch in a lot less formal
way. With a generation of savvy users, the demand for
a sophisticated network increased – Friendster gained
a level of notoriety but nothing prepared the world for
the imminent web-domination of MySpace.
MySpace catered to the needs of individuals of mod-
est computer skills. One could easily register and get a
page without having to understand mark-up languages
like HTML. One could visit another website and choose
a layer over the original webpage and thus personal-
ize it by copying a code into the administrative part
of one’s profile. The majority of MySpace users didn’t
have a clue what they were doing, but with the help of
YouTube and similar sites, many learned that they could
easily copy codes and move them around the Internet
with good results. The fact that this is possible makes
MySpace charming, but also hard to work with. Profiles
with dozens of pictures, videos and/or music players use
up a lot of bandwidth and are hard to open in a short
amount of time. This also puts a strain on the MySpace
server. Most users have at one time or another been
greeted with the message: “Sorry! an unexpected error
has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s
technical group.”
Technical problems are not the only ones facing
MySpace. The web-community has encountered yet
another contestant for the love of the everyday surfer.
Facebook has arrived. With standardized layouts and
no possibilities of importing HTML or CSS to change
the appearance of the profiles, Facebook manages
to keep its customers happy and speedily updated.
Facebook doesn’t allow its users to control as much
as they could on MySpace and keeps the process of
communication far lighter on its system. In turn, they
are not only stealing MySpace users, they are also
reaching a new crowd.
Easy does it
Facebook fans aren’t necessarily avid Internet users. Many
of them are regular people, some very afraid of comput-
ers. They’ve been invited to join the community through
one of their daily e-mail joking friends and found it pleas-
ingly simple. A friend of mine said “I found MySpace
way too hard, I was scared that I would do something
wrong.” Of course I know that MySpace isn’t all that
difficult to manage, as I’ve been a user for a while. That
doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way.
The terror of doing something wrong with comput-
ers is very common. Many people I know are terrified of
installing programs or running Ad-Aware. It is a relief
for them to find a web community that doesn’t rely
on this kind of knowledge in such an obvious way. In
my heyday as a MySpace user, I found many problems
without solutions. After reading through their manuals
and sending countless emails only to get standardized
replies, I realized that few problems would be fixed on
MySpace unless a lot of people had enough of them. In
a social network system that counts 189 million users,
it’s hard to have a voice.
Spam is death
Spamming has become a huge problem on MySpace. But
the bigger problem is that the users of MySpace know
so little about what they are doing that they don’t do
anything to prevent it from spreading. Comments filled
with ringtone ads, Macy’s gift cards and invitations to
see who’s clicking on your profile are terrorizing users
everywhere. The bulletin board is filled with sex ads
and ringtones. Sometimes users receive these ads in
messages from friends who don’t realize they’ve been
hacked and need to change their passwords so they’ll
stop sending others spam. Facebook is blissfully rid of
all these problems. What’s even better is the fact that, at
least until now, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg,
refuses to sell his company to big investors. Not only
does he gain respect from the users of his system but
his peers as well. Unlike the owners of YouTube and
MySpace, the owner of Facebook hasn’t caved in to
the money men. Not yet.
Not selling out?
In return, the users of Facebook find a web community
with fewer ads, less viruses and spam problems and a
broader spectrum of users. In May, Zuckerberg opened
the Facebook system so that other software developers
could contribute to his system. These applications can
now be added to a Facebook profile if one chooses to
do so. Most of the applications modify the profiles to
show what type of books/music/films the user likes.
The loud music promotion of MySpace is not to be
found on Facebook. Most applications don’t even provide
full songs. The colourful sites are not there and the only
thing that makes a site worth seeing is a picture of the
owner and the amount of information he or she cares
to share with the world. Privacy is restricted to geogra-
phy of networks and anyone can close their profile to
strangers in a similar way MySpace users can.
Whatever the purpose, both sites have their venue
but I find that my friends on Facebook are not quite the
same friends I have on MySpace. Still, I have a feeling
that my Icelandic friend count is growing fast.
MySpace vs. Facebook
Text by Helga Þórey Jónsdóttir
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ÍS
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80
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6/
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Comments filled with ringtone
ads, Macy’s gift cards and in-
vitations to see who’s clicking
on your profile are terrorizing
users everywhere. The bulletin
board is filled with sex ads and
ringtones.
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