With membership of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter still growing daily around the world, and the popularity of Myspace waning, some sites are still proving more popular than others. But do they all do pretty much the same thing? And if not, which site is right for you?
Mark Zuckerberg's Brainchild still Holding its Own
Facebook is the undisputed current king of the social networking world. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, initially set it up while still at University. Intended as a tool for students only, and only on his Harvard campus, it grew to include students in other campuses across the country before eventually accepting anyone attending a school from the age of thirteen upwards.
The next stage was opening it up to employees of IT companies, securing the ultra hip reputation of young people and techies alike. Its slow release and growth, and exclusive membership (which originally required an invitation from an existing member to join) ensured that eventually everyone wanted a piece of it.
One of the few social networking sites still privately owned, it has the status of being the only site that your younger brother and your parents have both heard of, and probably use. And it is multi media. Not only can you provide friends with updates on your day, but you can chat via its own in house version of messenger and post photos and videos for friends to comment on.
It also allows you to become ‘fans’ of businesses that you have an affinity to; wannabe writers can be fans of publishing companies, sports fans can link to pages belonging to their favourite teams and so on.
Twitter, hot on the heels of its main competitor is one of the social networking sites that you either love or hate, but just as the mobile phone was once lampooned before it morphed into the 'iphone' and everyone eventually succumbed and bought one, Twitter seems to be going the same way.
Twitter Critics
Critics point out the limitations in the length of status updates you can post – a maximum of 140 characters. But these 140 character length ‘tweets’ have added a new word to our language and our dictionaries, which is evidence of how Twitter has captured the Zeitgeist in the same way that Facebook did.
It's huge celebrity membership has added to the craze, with millions of people signing up to follow their own favourite celebrity tweets, and eventually adding their own. The powerful allure of getting into two-way tweet with someone famous, in a way that would only be possible in cyber-space has hit a nerve.
Whereas Facebook attracts users of all ages, Twitter’s users tend to be older, with only 11 per cent of
users being 12 and 17 years old.
Myspace Struggling?
Myspace on the other hand, is a younger users social networking site. Just four years ago it was the most popular social networking site out there, but in cyber space that’s a long, long time. In 2009, it announced plans to cut its workforce by over a third, having been overtaken in the popularity stakes by Facebook several month beforehand.
It is owned by the mighty 'Newscorp' empire run by Rupert Murdoch, and heavily promoted on the hugely popular show, 'Glee', also owned by him. Its original appeal, apart from being an uber cool student based membership, was that it was hugely popular with aspiring musicians. In student houses across the world, young and emerging bands had discovered a way to share their music without the need for a record label.
Its waning popularity amongst its core members may have been linked to some of Myspace’s more controversial, right wing moves. Allegations of religious discrimination have been made - it also faced criticism of agreeing with China to produce a censored version for the communist country.
Shaun Evans-Pask - Shaun is a post-graduate level CIPD qualified equality and diversity specialist with a focus on organisation development, learning and ...
