Facebook recently announced that it would be introducing the option to have a link on your profile's URL- it would be, according to the official blog, a way of making it easier for your friends to find you. The only problem I can see with this is that Facebook already uses people's real names for people searches, so why do they feel the need to add this feature? I think the answer's simple- to turn into MySpace.
It's no secret that MySpace popularised social networking- it practically invented it, so I feel that a lot of people set it as their benchmark for how a similar site should be run. Facebook changed that, mainly by having customisable content on every level- you could add photos, videos, tell people what you were doing at any given moment, play games within the browser you were using, so much stuff it was impossible to keep track of it all. It was new, fresh and people loved it. Facebook soon became the people's choice for social networking.
But then MySpace hit back- they started adding customisable content for people's profiles, too. They allowed you to share photos, videos, tell people what you were doing at any given moment, play games within the browser you were using, so much stuff you couldn't count it. In fact, if you think about it, the idea was lifted wholesale from Facebook. Or to put it another way, MySpace stole the idea from Facebook.
Then came the integrated instant messaging service. Fcaebook had the idea first- a toolbar across the bottom of your browser built into Facebook's code and fully integrated with the site and it's functions. It was innovative, and not many people had seen this function before. But it wasn't long before MySpace came up with their own integrated instant messaging service, and the interface was exactly the same, but with a different colour scheme. Again, MySpace had stolen an idea wholesale from Facebook.
Now Facebook has had the idea to make a username part of a profile's URL. This is nothing new. In fact, MySpace has been doing this since the site's conception. It was the main draw of MySpace for a lot of people- the ability to maintain anonyminity on the Internet, but still allow people to find them. It was an idea also used by Bebo, the long lost cousin of the social networking world. But now Facebook are using it, and I personally feel that it's a direct retaliation towards MySpace for all the theft that had been previously employed by MySpace regarding content.
But let's look at the bigger picture here. Social networking is starting to become the same kind of thing- customisable content; an easy to find screen name; the ability to talk to your friends on the site in real time without having to download additional content- there's no innovation anymore, no-one seems willing to try new ideas, instead going back to the old tried and tested formulae. It reminds me a lot of the gaming world when a console's starting to come towards the end of it's lifespan- developers decide that in order to try and optimise what little income they might have, they decide to rehash old ideas (usually from the best recieved and best selling games released on the console) and release them as original ideas, but they're never as good as the games they stole from. The buying public normally spot the imposter and shun them out of loyalty for the original game. That obviously can't happen with social networking, as every website is stealing from every other website, leading to a sea of clones and pale imitations.
So do we boycott social network sites? It's extreme, I admit, and not a course of action I'll personally be taking, but if you feel that it'll help, then sure, boycott Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. I don't know what you'll achieve out of it, but at least you can say that you tried.
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