Battling Pages: Cheesman's MySpace vs My Facebook
Human resources search engine optimization expert Joel Cheesman posted an entry yesterday comparing MySpace to Facebook and giving a number of reasons why he likes MySpace more than Facebook. One of his reasons is that he can promote a very simple web page address to those who want to look at his MySpace page. Facebook? Not so much.
Let's compare. Here's a link to Joel Cheesman's MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/jcheesman. I'd give you a link to mine but it is under development. That's code for pathetic, we know it, and we're working on it.
Here's a link to my Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/p/Steven_Rothberg/562280122. Once again, the Cheesman preaches the truth.
Facebook does have a neat "badge" feature though. In about a minute, you can generate the code to post a badge like this to your blog or web site and it updates automatically as you update your Facebook profile:
Steven,
One thing worth noting is that in the past, many have speculated that Facebook succeeded in large part because it was a walled garden with a pretty good lock on the gate. The more middle-aged executives and high school freshmen show up at the party, the more Facebook runs the risk of losing exactly what made it so successful in its niche.
Some of the best examples of this are in the clothing business. Gap saw how much success Abercrombie was having with the 18-24s and started chasing after it; they didn't win the college crowd but they did alienate the 25-35yo buyers that had made them a household name.
One thing where Joel is dead on is how central music is to MySpace, and how Murdoch's people know how to treat this as an entertainment and media game rather than a software product one. I've long believed that the musical angle served as a critical differentiator to catalyze MySpace's early growth.