Shane EvansChecking Facebook and MySpace has become more important to most students at 2:45 a.m. than finishing that five-page paper. It’s true; students have become openly addicted to these social networks and see no problem with it, as long as it remains safe and smart.
While its users frequently use both sites more than four times a day, not everyone shares the same thoughts on which of the two is best. “I don’t mess with MySpace,” senior accounting major Marty Reilly said. “It’s complicated and there’s no instruction on how to make it look cool.”
MySpace is popular because it gives the user the opportunity to personalize their page by adding trendy backgrounds and emotion-depicting music, unlike Facebook, which has a layout that is permanent and fairly basic. It also has a larger network of people. Anyone can join MySpace.
Blogging too has become a good asset to add to such sites. MySpace was the first of the two to have a section dedicated to the user’s thoughts and it wasn’t until recently that Facebook incorporated the same idea into its own website with the option to write “Notes” that can be read by friends.
However, with our picture-crazed society, Facebook comes out on top with its unlimited amount of uploads. “I tried to post another picture last night on my MySpace and it told me I had reached my max at 16,” Bridget McNulty, sophomore secondary education major said. “The pictures are definitely the best part of Facebook. You can be tagged and post albums that help you remember the good times.”
Facebook’s latest “News Feeds” however have become nothing less than creepy. Students agree that Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg went a little too far. “I used to like Facebook better, but the News Feeds seem to just make it easier for people to become stalked. They know every single thing that happens,” senior John Casparro, finance/accounting major said, “It was better the way it was before.”
With the numerous reports on “60 Minutes” and “Dateline” about social networks like MySpace being the breading ground for potential stalkers, Facebook users just weren’t having it. News spread quickly of the changes made to the college students’ favorite past time and various groups were established against it.
Zuckerberg released a letter to Facebook users apologizing for the changes after he received negative feedback: “When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control to them.” He then went on to explain how to customize the privacy settings to better fit the users needs.
More and more MySpace users are setting their pages to private, meaning that only those whom they are friends with are able to view their profile. This feature is amicable to both current and new users since it’s safer and promising.
Despite all of its changes, Facebook is still up and running and MySpace is a growing epidemic that doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Sure college students might prefer one over the other, but the truth is that they still log onto both faithfully, because curiosity always wins over boredom.
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