According to Compete.com: Facebook pulled even with MySpace this past December, and is now clobbering them.
My opinion on the drubbing? Usability. MySpace gave the option to users to personalize their pages according to their tastes and styles. But was it too much freedom? As evidence of many MySpace profiles, the users are not web designers by any means.
One of the most important things in website design is usability, which, (surprise) is making a website easy to use: Easy navigation, easy to find things, consistency, etc.
How is the usability on Myspace? Everyone can set up their page differently, sometimes just for the sake of being different... and it usually turns into a mess that only the person behind the profile thinks is a work of art. Everyone else thinks it's not worth spending time navigating through.
Some of the things, I've asked myself on a Myspace profile:
- Where's the "Add Comment" amongst all the off-sized pictures, videos, animated gifs and logos.
- Why do I hear all this noise? Oh, it's the song and the 2 videos all playing at once.
- Do people know that yellow text on a white background might be tough to read?
Facebook didn't give people as much freedom in their profiles. As a matter of fact just look at Facebook users reactions when the Global layout changed: Shocker: Facebookers Not Happy With Redesign
In the Internet industry we hear that for every 1 year in real life the internet goes through 12. So did Myspace just run it's course?
I don't think so. It's still well before it's time. I give credit to Myspace for starting to allow a more structured way to edit the content of the profiles. But do the users still have too much control? And is it too late?
Thoughts?