Cody Brown has written an article talking about Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter and talking about how they have either filled certain niches, or attempted to grow in too many directions at once.
I think that the image showing Myspace as a ‘digital ghetto’ is pretty accurate. At one point, Myspace was the place to be, and was frequently the first page that people would try to load. If Myspace wasn’t working, people assumed that their computer was broken or the whole internet was down. (If I had $5 for every time I fielded a tech support call about Myspace, I’d be able to retire..) People had myspace friends by the dozens. But Myspace has become overly cluttered with spam, junk profiles, and obnoxious flashing advertisements everywhere. It’s as if the worst of Geocities web pages had come back to attack. Now it seems that Myspace’s traffic has fallen while traffic to Facebook has risen substantially. Some think it’s a socio-economic class divide. It could be a mix of both. They tend to come and go. Remember Friendster? It’s been overrun by spam. How about the Google owned Orkut? It’s great, if you’re in Brazil. Hi5.com also went viral and experienced substantial growth…. in southeast Asia.

Which social networking site is your favorite and why? Have social networking sites made your life a more interesting place?

Tags: internet, social networking