MySpace, Facebook, and The Whole 9 are just a few of the many social networking sites available on the Internet. With so many social networking sites to choose from, learning about what each site has to offer will help determine which one to park your on-line life on.
Common Features of Social Networking Sites
Most social networking sites present freedom of expression by offering the ability to upload photos, music, and videos. Each site also offers customized profile pages using varying themes making homepage design a quick and simple process. Another shared quality is the ability to search for new friends with common interests or the option to search for existing friends by simply entering their name or e-mail address.
The Differences in Social Networking Sites
MySpace was one of the first popular networking sites and claims to be “for everyone.” MySpace offers a bulletin feature as well, a tool that makes sending out important notices to all of your friends effortless. Blog settings on MySpace include viewable by friends only, MySpace members only, or allowing the blog to be available to the public. These blog settings also offer the option to subscribe to a blog which delivers a notification when it has been updated.
While Facebook does not have an official blog section, it does have a section known as “notes” in which blog-type writing may be placed. Alternately, instead of inserting blogs into the notes section, a link to an off-site blog may be placed there instead. Another difference is the type of notification system available through Facebook which may be set to notify the user when their comments anywhere on Facebook have received a reply.
The Whole 9 is described as “a new online community where you can meet PEOPLE, create a PORTFOLIO, speak up in ABOVE THE FOLD and GET WORK.” Simply put, The Whole 9 is a site directed towards attracting artists and creative people. Each user is offered the opportunity to set up a portfolio page of artistic work for the intention of job seeking, along with the profile page.
Facebook originally targeted college-age users according to Matt O’Hern in his article "Facebook attracts more new users than Myspace."
According to a comparison graph from May 2009, Facebook had over 113,000 users compared to over 56,000 for MySpace while The Whole9 came in at over 6,000 users.
O’Hern states, “The ultimate irony is that the growth came after Facebook ditched its niche, college only format, which was one its most appealing aspects to early subscribers, myself included, who saw it as a nice contrast to the Myspace crowd.”
If rekindling lost friendships from the past is a high priority, Facebook’s popularity among users would make it the most likely place to find them. Yet if the desire is a more intimate networking site, these numbers show The Whole9 to be an ideal place for artistic users wishing to keep their social circle to a minimum. MySpace fits somewhere between the two.
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