This is something I find myself asking more and more as Myspace release “new features” that are basically the same as what Facebook offers right now.
Myspace recently released a new feature to include comments on your “Status and Mood” (the “What are you doing right now?” thing) posts. The first comment I saw on these posts read “I know, Myspace is becoming more and more like Facebook. It’s disappointing.” and it was on a post that read “I am disappointed with the new update”. I guess that is where I got the idea to create a post like this, but the person had a very valid point.
Out of the 3 most recent features Myspace have released 2 of them have been almost identical to what Facebook offers at the moment. I am sure if I went back further with the releases I would notice a lot more (I seem to remember writing in a post here about how Myspace is trying to match Facebooks features whilst keeping their own), off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 more (so not including the 2 aforementioned) that were very similar to Facebook. Myspace Lite is the only big feature that has been unique to Myspace in a long time and I have to say that it is possibly the best feature they have released in years (in my opinion). The web based IM and then this new feature are both very similar to what Facebook offers which I can understand why Myspace want to include them but I still think they could have thought of a good way to make them unique to Myspace or at least release a few other unique updates as well.
Personally I use both Facebook and Myspace about the same amount of time each day (because I have friends that I want to keep in touch with who only use one of the sites) and I notice similarities all the time in updates they both release. I think that Myspace are worse for it though, I think that they must have the idea that Facebook is growing much faster at the moment and so they need to be much more like them. In all honesty I think that Facebook is probably growing faster at the moment because the types of people who use social networking sites are already on Myspace, but what do I know? Its not like I have done a study about it or something.
I might just be saying a load of crap here, maybe others think that the Myspace features that are similar are actually totally different than those of Facebook? What do you think?
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May 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
“Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be named CEO of MySpace”… In a ditch effort to get back their #1 status they have gone to the now top social networking site to steal ideas, that MAY be why so many of the apps that MySpace is putting out are just like Facebook. I agree with you, there is already a Facebook and MySpace needs to find a new way to be fresh and new!