lordofdabu (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lordofdabu) wrote,@ 2009-03-15 17:19:00 |
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Facebook changes
As pretty much everyone has noticed (or heard) by now, facebook recently transitioned its users to a new homepage style which greatly resembles that of twitter. "Why?" many users outcried, and for good reason: For many, the new style is a step backwards, and at first glance there doesn't seem to be any logical explanation for fixing something that wasn't broken.
Back in 2004, I signed up for a website called "www.thefacebook.com" back when it had the "the" as part of its url. At the time, you had to be a college student, and only about 50 colleges were supported (it is not surprising that a technical school like RPI would be among the first). Things were much simpler than as far as this website was concerned. There were no applications, no quizzes, no videos, and your "wall" consisted of a single post that anyone could edit (that is, the analogy actually made sense). It's closest competitor was connectu.com, a website that hardly anyone remembers, despite it being almost identical (identical enough that it led to a lawsuit, in fact). thefacebook had a few advantages though; it had a better name, you could search by classes (a feature that has been removed), and -- most importantly -- it had a larger user base. Given that everything else was the same, why use connectu?
Next up was myspace. After connectu was more or less done, it didn't take too long before facebook decided to mimic its next competitor: myspace. Despite being horribly disorganized, there were things you could do on myspace that you couldn't do on facebook. You didn't need a college e-mail to sign up, you could keep a blog, you could add music and videos, and comments on your profile were more like a message board than a single post. Facebook gradually added all of these features. They started by opening up to high school students. At first, they were kept separate and couldn't interact with each other, but eventually the two were merged. They added notes for the bloggers among us. The wall posts were made the same as myspace's wall equivalent. Eventually they added applications to let users add videos, music, pictures of bidoof, and the kitchen sink to their profile. And now, with myspace and facebook so much closer in resemblance, what reason does a facebook user have to make a myspace profile?
Of course, they still weren't the most used means of social communication. That honor goes to AIM. Facebook added chat communication, but it doesn't have most of the bells and whistles that AIM does. I suspect they realized the same thing I did; cell phones and text messaging are already doing a great job of suppressing AIM on their own, so there's no need to flesh out the feature (and let's face it, facebook chat is pretty bad). I will not be surprised if facebook adds live voice communication within the next year or two.
I'm not just rambling here. I do have a point! Right now, the three biggest social networks in terms of userbase are 1: facebook 2: myspace 3: twitter (at least if wikipedia is to be believed). Twitter first appeared about a year ago and currently has about 6 million users and 55 million monthly hits. What's the best way for facebook to deal with this new site? Their answer is to look as much like twitter as they can, and that's *exactly* what the new facebook homepage is. Now, what reason does a facebook user have to sign up for twitter? After all, they look almost exactly the same (now, at least).
Facebook doesn't care if most of its users detest it. They just want to prevent you from also going somewhere else.
As pretty much everyone has noticed (or heard) by now, facebook recently transitioned its users to a new homepage style which greatly resembles that of twitter. "Why?" many users outcried, and for good reason: For many, the new style is a step backwards, and at first glance there doesn't seem to be any logical explanation for fixing something that wasn't broken.
Back in 2004, I signed up for a website called "www.thefacebook.com" back when it had the "the" as part of its url. At the time, you had to be a college student, and only about 50 colleges were supported (it is not surprising that a technical school like RPI would be among the first). Things were much simpler than as far as this website was concerned. There were no applications, no quizzes, no videos, and your "wall" consisted of a single post that anyone could edit (that is, the analogy actually made sense). It's closest competitor was connectu.com, a website that hardly anyone remembers, despite it being almost identical (identical enough that it led to a lawsuit, in fact). thefacebook had a few advantages though; it had a better name, you could search by classes (a feature that has been removed), and -- most importantly -- it had a larger user base. Given that everything else was the same, why use connectu?
Next up was myspace. After connectu was more or less done, it didn't take too long before facebook decided to mimic its next competitor: myspace. Despite being horribly disorganized, there were things you could do on myspace that you couldn't do on facebook. You didn't need a college e-mail to sign up, you could keep a blog, you could add music and videos, and comments on your profile were more like a message board than a single post. Facebook gradually added all of these features. They started by opening up to high school students. At first, they were kept separate and couldn't interact with each other, but eventually the two were merged. They added notes for the bloggers among us. The wall posts were made the same as myspace's wall equivalent. Eventually they added applications to let users add videos, music, pictures of bidoof, and the kitchen sink to their profile. And now, with myspace and facebook so much closer in resemblance, what reason does a facebook user have to make a myspace profile?
Of course, they still weren't the most used means of social communication. That honor goes to AIM. Facebook added chat communication, but it doesn't have most of the bells and whistles that AIM does. I suspect they realized the same thing I did; cell phones and text messaging are already doing a great job of suppressing AIM on their own, so there's no need to flesh out the feature (and let's face it, facebook chat is pretty bad). I will not be surprised if facebook adds live voice communication within the next year or two.
I'm not just rambling here. I do have a point! Right now, the three biggest social networks in terms of userbase are 1: facebook 2: myspace 3: twitter (at least if wikipedia is to be believed). Twitter first appeared about a year ago and currently has about 6 million users and 55 million monthly hits. What's the best way for facebook to deal with this new site? Their answer is to look as much like twitter as they can, and that's *exactly* what the new facebook homepage is. Now, what reason does a facebook user have to sign up for twitter? After all, they look almost exactly the same (now, at least).
Facebook doesn't care if most of its users detest it. They just want to prevent you from also going somewhere else.
