Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter…Oh My!

If you have any sense of computer and internet literacy, you have an account with one of these websites. Whether you hopped on the bandwagon recently, or you’ve witnessed the many re-designs, like I have, from when you first signed up, there’s no doubt at least one, two, or all three of these culture shifters consumes a part of your attempt at a social networking lifestyle. But what separates these three? Which one(s) are dying, and which one(s) are, as Leonardo DiCaprio says it, “the way of the future?” Let’s take a look:

First and foremost…..MYSPACE IS DEAD. But don’t start throwing the bottles at me yet, let me finish. MYSPACE IS DEAD….to the individual user profiler. MySpace IS NOT DEAD to the band/artist/comedian/preacher etc. Now if you’re wondering, “Cameron, what’s the difference???” let me tell you. If you don’t already know, MySpace offers two types of profiles: Normal individual profiles (probably what you have), and Music Profiles. Originally, Music Profiles were meant for recording artists to have a free website to upload their entire discographies of MP3 songs, post upcoming shows, and even sell their songs and merchandise. It quickly grew past well known recording artists ditching their money-costing website to aspiring artists having access to millions of people on a daily basis. Then came MySpace Records eyeballing these unknown artists who had a million friends, and pushing them to stardom (Colbie Caillat with 22 MILLION plays while being unsigned, Lily Allen, Sean Kingston). Now, this “music page” is a great resource for comedians, motivational speakers, and even preachers, as they’re able to upload and sell acts, teachings, and sermons along with their booking schedule, FOR NO COST. On the flip side, for Normal individual profiles, floods of spamming “super-hot model-bots” wanting to be your “best friend” and invite you to their “private site” have reached the tipping point of user annoyance. So if you still have a normal MySpace profile, don’t fear, there is light at the end of the tunnel….ONCE YOU DEACTIVATE IT.

That light could be found in a name that continues to extend its lead over MySpace with 69.1 million visitors in March….and that name is Facebook. It was originally a spin-off of of a Harvard version of HOTorNOT.com, which some of us remember spending countless hours on during our younger years rating people’s photos from 1-10. What a power trip…being 15… “this chick’s an 8….this ones a 9…her average just went down!!” Anyways, in my opinion, the original concept and implementation of Facebook was ingenious. For those of us that DO remember, you had to have a college/business e-mail to join at first. This filtered out all the middle & high school kids, and basically all the immature, mind-rotting nonsense that myspace was slowly becoming engulfed in. But eventually, they gave in. In 2005 high school students could join, and in September of 2006, anyone 13 OR OLDER with a valid e-mail could join. This exclusive social profile network slowly allowed itself to become pretty much 60% of what we hated about MySpace. And after the redesigns of NewsFeeds and losing their original user-friendly setup (even after the SECOND backlash, the new Facebook layout is still terrible), I’m afraid it’s only going to go downhill from here. Now I love facebook, I still use it today…not as much as I used to, but often. But for me, it’s become the cool younger cousin of Classmates.com, randomly reuniting me with family and friends I grew up with. Especially with tagged photos. There’s such a nostalgic excitement when you’ve been tagged at a 1999 birthday party with friends you havent talked to in almost 10 years.  Even with recent photos, it’s a great interface to upload photos and albums and to see pics from recent events. All in all, it’s something to never get rid of, as it’s still currently the best social networking profile out there. But Facebook introduced one key feature that has absolutely changed our social networking culture as we know it: status updates.

Take everything that facebook does, get rid of it all except for status updates. And that, my friend, is Twitter. Growing at 2,565%, the “SMS of Internet” is the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category. Twitter is your status update. Period. You have people who subscribe to your updates, known as followers, and you follow others. But with a post limit of 140 characters, it’s what you say that makes or breaks you. Twitter isn’t meant for “Watching TV on my couch,” but for “Watching Spartan Vs. Warrior on SPIKE, who do you think will win?” Not a great example (I’ll post a Twitter Etiquette blog later), but Twitter is basically a great opportunity to get instant opinions on any number of topics and to endulge your day with some witty thoughts. Along with add-ons like Twit-Pic, you can also post pictures with your tweets. And twitter just keeps getting bigger. With the recent competition between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to see who gets 1,000,000 followers first, the queen of women, Oprah, hopping on board, and seeing on every TV Channel “follow us on Twitter!”, it truly is the next big thing. Oh ya, don’t forget to follow me on twitter 😉 See, it’s as simple as that.

In a fast paced world, we want everything quick and we want it now. Myspace became too much of a hassle to deal with, and Facebook keeps adding CHANGE WE DON’T NEED to make it even more complicated. But like I said, keep your Facebook for staying in touch with old friends. But eventually, you won’t have 2 hours to spare to search through the Facebook NewsFeed finding something you actually care about. If you’re an artist, musician, preacher, or comedian and you don’t want to pay $$$ for a website, hook yourself up with a myspace artist profile. Sell your stuff on there, and enjoy a free promoter. If you want a stripped-down, easy to use, thought resourceful micro-blogger that will force you to actually use your brain to post meaningful updates, then Twitter is the way to go.

Which ones do you use? What are your thoughts/opinions?