MySpace vs Facebook IV - Finals

As already stated, the first difference between Facebook and MySpace you will notice is the rather hurting number of ads. And I'm talking blinking, shifting, annoying GIF- and Flash-ads here. This is only what you endure on your configure page. The page visitors see is almost ad-free (one header ad at last count).



You can edit your profile to tell the uncaring world about your favorite music, world views, heroes, etc., just as with Facebook. You can enter HTML&CSS to the fields, JavaScript is not allowed and using CSS to get rid of the ads is a No-No, too.

Photos

Pretty much the same as in Facebook. It lacks the ability to tag your friends, but allows you to create a diashow, which you cannot do with Facebook. Albums can be private, your friends only or for all to see.

Videos

The MySpace integrated video option is better than the application I saw at Facebook.
Almost all common file formats are possible and each movie has a maximum 100MB file size.

Calendar

The Calendar feature much reminded me of Outlook at work. You can search for more or less local events via the calendar or post your own.

The last two standard features are a Blog and an adress book. The blog is steady enough, but I'd advice using Blogger instead. One nice feature is that you can link a Podcast to your blog. I didn't try that.

The Blog also allows you to see who your faithful readers are.

The adress book is fairly standard issue. I made a quick jump to my MySpace Inbox from there. They installed a new spam-filter lately which might explain that offers from the liberal ladies mentioned earlier are on a decline.

Now I could be going on for hours and hours. Yes, there are also forums and TV shows and and and in MySpace. I saw no direct way to integrate pre-chewed applications as in Facebook.

In a final comparison between MySpace and Facebook I'd say:

If you are looking for a real contact network, to keep in touch with your friends and have fun with them, Facebook IMHO is made for you.

If on the other hand you are an unknown band or movie maker or photographer or you're looking for a free page to advertise your podcast, you should go for MySpace.

I myself will stay with Facebook for now. But I have the feeling that once Google manages to make a whole out of the services they bought up and form it into one big empire they will be number 1.

MySpace vs Facebook III - Let's face it!

Let's start with a more detailed review of Facebook. The reason is simple, I have much more contacts there, which kind of seems to be the reason to start the whole contact network thing at all - right?

So the first screen you get to when logging in shows the latest news, starting with your friends and then your network(s). A nice way of getting a quick overview of how your friends & contacts are faring and who has hugged, thrown a drink at or bitten whom recently... The network news are often comprised of far less mature content and thus less inspiring for the educated mind.



The next page you may want to check is your profile. It's here you can:
Generate new photo albums:
Each album is limited to 60 pictures and a Java-based upload program is used. It's simple but quite effective, perhaps not as appealing as a desktop solution like the one Picasa offers, but that cannot be expected.

After the upload completes, you can add captions to the pics and - a very nice feature I think - if another of your Facebook friends is on the picture, you can "point" him and add a remark, that he is on it, too.

Groups

You can also join tons of Groups at Facebook, sorted by Networks, interests, or not sorted at all. And of course you can also start your own group. Topics range from history, photography to rather obscure ancient cults like "Hasslehoff is God".

Events

As the name states, you can post your own events here or browse for a multitude of events posted on Facebook at the moment. So when (and if, in my case... I never find the energy to clean up) you plan your next big party and only want the Internet nerds amongst your friends present, post it here!

The last standard appication is a marketplace. This is not Ebay, but more like your good ole neighborhood mini-ads newspaper.
I found some free music to listen to in the freebies section, so it's not all bad.

You also have your Wall - for exchanging world press news with your friends - and a Posted Items section.

So far your profile will look much like anyone else's profile. If you want to spice it up, you will need to install new applications. And there are tons of them!

A warning in advance (thanks to Astrid for this) - check the security profile options after you install applications!

I went for a Vampire/Werewolf plugin, because they are probably even older than I am, but still have appeal.

Also, music & video are standard at MySpace... So I added two applications to get even.

All in all you get quite some out of it at Facebook with minimum effort, I'd say. A nice way to waste some time. Correcting my previous post about Facebook, though: I actually did NOT see a way to enter custom source code (as in HTML, CSS, JavaScript) yet.

Political Talkshow Chats

I watched a political Talkshow today, which probably says a lot more about my current state-of-mind than I am readily willing to admit... But!

Did you guys notice that all of them now have this nice and probably mostly harmless super-strictly moderated after-talk Chat?

Now, after they finished I decided to join the chat. I expected at least a thousand others there. There were fifty-five top.

I think it would be easily manageable to "conquer" such a discussion. And I think I really would enjoy that after only one of my questions was even published by that moderator from hell! (Yeah, kid gloves for their oh-so-special special guests! And I was being civil!)

Anyone in to join me, please post me a comment with your email and we'll go for some real ridicilous discussion!

Anyone interested in the transcript of the discussion I joined: Leave a comment and I'll mail it to you. It's not very interesting, but more interesting than the guests at the show (including the guy answering the questions...)

And once again german. I'll go for more international topics again, I promise!

Call-In-TV on YouTube

I usually am a strong supporter of Gruenegnome.de and other sites and organizations fighting the good war against Call-In TV.

For those who don't know:
You wake up in the midst of the night after having fallen asleep while half-eye watching this movie you absolutely had to see. You wake up because some obnoxious guy is screaming at you at the sound level of a Heavy Metal concert...

You open up your eyes and see some riddle the answer to which even in your half-dazed condition jumps to your mind instantly. (Add a drained bottle of Vodka to that, you still could solve it...) You jump to the phone and dial the number: Hey, you could win 5000 Euro!

Yes, that's Call-In TV shows.

I once saw a spot of an old lady that had a telephone bill of 3000 Euro, because she kept calling there (at a rate of 50 cents per call, no matter if you get through or not...). This was cruel!

All that said, even these programs can come up with some entertainment and amusement... If at the costs of others...

I apologize to any reader who doesn't understand German... Life just ain't fair!

MySpace vs Face Book II

After creating an account at both sites, most features were identical at first look.
I could allow for my Email contacts to be searched, so I could find my "friends".
(I even found my old advisor at the bank... Tsktsk... Shouldn't go Facebook with her company account!)

Those not already signed up, I could invite, if I wanted to, which I didn't.

The first thing I did was to tune down my profile. I wanted only those that I accepted as friends to be able to see my profile. And also, with both MySpace and Facebook, I removed myself from all internal search engines.

This point so far went to Facebook... Even though it should be impossible, I received two invitations from barely clad ladies who offered to be my "friends". And though there is nothing to say against almost nude ladies in general, I have my doubts in MySpace security options.

The menues of both networks I found slightly straining, not very intuitive or neatly organized.

Then again by just surfing MySpace a bit, I found a lot of unknown (to me) bands who promoted their music there, some even offered downloads.

Another thing though: MySpace proudly proclaims to be "powered by Google" now. Google did buy a lot of interesting services lately, more than one could shake a pointed stick at.

But the integration of those features into a big Google family is still lacking. I think that within a year or so, if they manage to make it possible to swap and interchange data, it will represent an all-round offer hard to resist.

So far I found it impossible to link this Blog to my Myspace site as Blog, for example. Or directly load pics from Picasa into the Blog. I can go to Picasa and have a link generated that I can then enter into a Blog entry.

Both Facebook and Myspace allow for integration of your own HTML&CSS code.

When it comes to ads, MySpace is worse in my humble opinion. Hey, time to check out what I can do there and what I can't.