"What makes Facebook so much better than Friendster, MySpace, and all the rest?"

History:

The very first social networking site was Friendster. Originally it grew out of the idea that people in entertainment should network with one another. For example, I signed up because of a friend of mine in Dubai who did club events at a few prominent locales. So in many ways the things we expect from social networking sites stem from Friendster.

I can’t recall which came next between Facebook and MySpace, but I feel like MySpace may have come earlier. Facebook was originally titled something else (was it “thefacebook.com”?).

It would be great to say “the longer they’re around, the better they become,” but that’s not always the case. There’s more, in this case. The intended audience plays a role, as does the intended purpose.

What I mean to say is that older audiences don’t tend to be as concerned about social networking as either entertainment people or students would be. So Friendster and Facebook have an edge in that sense. However, the monetization scheme (purpose) matters as well. In general, these sites are all driven by advertising. There may be secondary things done with the data collected, but it’s primarily advertising. Friendster’s audience is very open to advertising in general, since their target audience is all about promotion anyway. Facebook’s audience is open to advertising…they’re primarily college kids with time to kill! MySpace, though, is there for everyone. So they simultaneously have a broader audience and more opportunity.

From a technical side, though (I’m a Math teacher), Facebook is hands-down the better service. I can’t comment on Faebook as I haven’t used it nearly as much as Friendster for a number of years now. MySpace, however, is a giant stringy mess of bad programming. It has huge security holes and they could really care less about fixing it. If you want to learn more about that, look at the “Month of bugs” centered around MySpace. And that brings us up to…

Facebook is so much more about getting together with your groups than the experience in myspace. I think as people age, the experience and groupings in facebook are more appealing than the adolecence of myspace.

It’s just more mature - or maybe for more mature people, anyway.

Completely separately from all that, Facebook is pretty easy to use and doesn’t have the gazillion cookies that MySpace forces on you.