The MySpace-isation of Facebook?
Is Facebook becoming too much like MySpace? That’s what people have recently been asking, mainly after Facebook released its applications API and allowed anyone to code and display applications within the previously surgically clean interface.
It is well known that offering the chance of interface customisation to users nearly always ends up with a wide spectrum of results from the meticulous and beautifully crafted to the downright blinding. For good examples off the top of my head, consider MySpace, Geocities and Microsoft FrontPage. While Geocities and FrontPage may be pardoned because as web page creators, they have to offer some level of customisation, MySpace certainly cannot.
Facebook has done well with its conservative and non-changeable interface, and MySpace would be good to follow its lead. However, considering the large user base that it has, any changes will come with their own share of complaints at the “lack of freedom” offered. However, this main difference between the two most popular social networking sites also affects their respective audiences. While Facebook’s users are considered to be more professional, grown-up and well-off, MySpace users are generally younger and less inclines to worry about interface design judging by some of their profile pages. Twenty audio and video files playing at the same time is something that MySpace users are used to, while in the Facebook world, it would be unheard of.
The development teams also contribute a lot towards these stereotypes and audience inclinations. MySpace is seen to be more sloppily coded than Facebook (indeed, MySpace’s general default design and mixture of ASP and ColdFusion code alludes to this) and this gets reflected in profile pages.
The big question after all of this, however, is “Is Facebook becoming too much like MySpace?” Like it or not, this question has generally negative connotations (most Facebook users are proud of its clean layout) and the answer is not as clear as it would seem. User-created and installed applications have added some clutter to the interface as well as introducing inconsistencies (some coders code more sloppily than others), but there are still some limits to what people can do. The banning of auto-start videos and restrictions on code help preserve the general layout (unlike MySpace), but the very fact that Facebook encourages third-party apps while MySpace is only too keen to ban them really shows which one is the more flexible and customisable. You might not be able to change the layout of your profile page, but the fact that you can rearrange it and add to it means that you don’t need to anyway.
It’s my view that it’ll take a lot for Facebook to even get close to MySpace’s complete lack of organisation or taste on profile pages, and applications certainly don’t move it any closer.