There are so many online communicators people may use every day in order to meet personal needs and achieve positive results within the professional sphere of life, for example. There are so many things people can do online and even do not leave the room; numerous innovations within the Internet technologies provide users all over the world with different abilities to develop their sills, exchange information, learn more captivating facts, and help the others to comprehend how wonderful and useful the web world is.
Facebook and MySpace are the two most popular networking websites, where people get a chance to communicate, create profiles, share information, etc. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that, at the beginning of the 21st century, people had no ideas of what Facebook or MySpace meant and how people could spend so much time there.
If a person has a chance to improve own work and communication, he/she is going to use one of these online community without any doubts and without taking into account that this use may be harmful. Such mediums for communication like Facebook and MySpace have lots of advantages and disadvantages; to comprehend the essence of their impact on people, it is better not only to know some general facts about these websites, but also be ready to analyze, compare, and realize their benefits and negative aspects.
First of all, it is necessary to admit that a certain battle between Facebook and MySpace takes place for a long period of time. These two networking websites cannot clear up which one has more dominance nowadays, which one has more international page views, and which one has heftier traffic. In spite of the fact that MySpace is one year older than Facebook, the latter has a certain number of benefits and advantages and can easily compete with the former.
Kleindorfer (2009) admits that numerous websites like Facebook have “risen from the primordial swamps of cyberspace to become major players based primarily on the power of their networks” (p.4). This is why it is not that surprisingly that Facebook and MySpace have advantages and disadvantages at the same time and have different impact on people and their online communication. Each of the above-mentioned websites has constant users and those people, who just visit it from time to time.
The preferences of users for one of these sites are caused by the differences, which MySpace and Facebook have and which people more or less active on. It does not matter that one of the website is better or worse; it is all about the spheres of work and users’ needs.
If you are searching for a job, it is possible to find some with the help of these two communicators; it turns out to be one of the benefits of MySpace and Facebook as people get a chance to find a good job within a short period of time and even do not leave their homes (Stair & Reynolds, 2009, p.73).
However, Facebook will be more beneficial for those people, who are good at computers and business, and MySpace will be more attractive for people with more creative preferences: people of art, musicians, and designers can find much more useful information on MySpace than on Facebook.
Even the general view of the sites and each page may be divided: MySpace has quite unique view, and each page has its own style and colors; and the pages of Facebook look like a bit strict and restrained. But still, both Facebook and MySpace aim at providing people with a chance to create, innovate, and demonstrate the best qualities only (Deans, 2009, p. 189).
MySpace and Facebook have lots of privileges for people, who want to communicate being far from each other: they can easily show photos, organize meetings, meet lots of new people, and find out more information. The point is that MySpace allows its users to concentrate on their creativity and amaze everyone with personal skills to create captivating pages and make them in different colors.
It turns out to be more interesting for teenagers and attract their attention more than Facebook. However, lots of adults prefer to use Facebook in order to have a chance to concentrate on the necessary communication and getting exact information, nothing more. If they have some time and desire, Facebook allows to create something really attractive as well, but not that creative as it is possible with MySpace.
This comparison of online communities will be impossible if we do not mention several negative aspects of MySpace and Facebook right now. Quick exchange of information and constant communication online has numerous advantages as well as disadvantages. For example, people are happy to have a free access to communicate with distant friends and discuss news and innovations; however, such communication may be too close and lead to quarrels and misunderstandings between rather good friends.
More than 250,000 accounts are created on MySpace each day (Mooney et al., 2008, p.631); this is why it is hard to imagine how many people can make friends day by day and have enough time to communicate with each other. So, some people take offence if one of friends does not either answer within a short period of time or check own mail frequently. This is why such inability to answer in time may cause quarrels and negatively influence user’s psychological condition.
Close connection with lots of people creates one more disadvantage – inability to get a private status. At MySpace, a personal profile is available for everyone, who has a desire to watch your page. This is why just a perfect advantage of distant communication may be easily frustrated with this negative affect of privacy inability.
Another disadvantage of such networking websites is constant spam and improper and vulgar comments. Those people, who use MySpace and Facebook to search for a job or a person, are constantly distracted by numerous windows, which appear very quickly. Such unexpected open windows may bring some harm to users’ computers and present offensive information. This inability to control spam turns out to be one of the most annoying negative affects of Facebook and MySpace.
People themselves create difficulties for other people in order to earn money – this cruel reality is evident even for online communities. They create new technologies and services and want other people evaluate and use them; MySpace and Facebook are the places, where users share this information without getting an approval from other people. Such freedom may enjoy one person and make anger another.
Of course, such diversity of online communities may be considered as a positive achievement of our society that makes our every day life easier. However, with such fast development, numerous negative aspects appear as well. For example, MySpace and Facebook cannot stop their fight in order to prove those services are better and more usable.
To get any possible answer, the developers of these communities try to create more and more conditions to follow. As a result, certain inequalities and divisions take place and make people choose something and be devoted to the chosen item. So, it is better to keep in mind that one advantage may cause several disadvantages in a short period of time; and users have to be ready to pick out the best way to follow and be satisfied with the choice.
Online communities like MySpace and Facebook, their benefits and disadvantages will be always under hot consideration among people of different age and social status. These kinds of communities are around us, and we cannot just skip them. People create more and more opportunities to develop and improve personal skills and learn this world better.
This is why all those numerous pages with quite different information about society, innovative technologies, and relations burn people with the desire to concentrate more and more on them.
It is known that more than “three-quarters of 18-34 year olds have an account on one of these social networking sites” (Business Wire, 2009); lots of people, when meet each other for the first time admit that they are Facebookers or MySpacers. Such kind of information turns out to be rather informative for some people and completely unknown for the others.
It is bad and good at the same time. This is why the comparison of benefits and negative affects of MySpace and Facebook will be always interesting and useful in order not to become addicted and even fall ill.
Reference List
Deans, P. C. (2009). Social Software and Web 2.0 Technology Trends. Richmond, United States: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
Business Wire. (2009). Just Under Half of Americans Have a Facebook or MySpace Account. BNET. Web.
Kleindorfer, P., Wind, Y., and Gunther, R.E. (2009). The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an Interlinked World. Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing.
Mooney, L. A., Knox, D., & Schacht, C. (2008). Understanding Social Problems. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Stair, R. M. & Reynolds, G. W. (2009). Principles of Information Systems. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Internet Sources:
https://myspace.com/
https://www.facebook.com/