Well well now. Look who just added blogging to their growing list of social networking features? Oh, sure, they call it “notes”, you know, but BOY is it a blog, especially since you can link up RSS feeds from your actual blog. I wonder who they could be competing with? Soon you’ll be able to customize your profile page with colors and background music. Although, I must say, the ability to tag your notes with your friends is cool. I don’t know if that other service has the ability to do that or not, since I don’t use it.
Why would facebook add something like this? Why, after what seemed like a long time without anything new, have they suddenly been slamming out new features like it’s going out of style? The answer is precisely because they are afraid of going out of style. They are acting to protect their market share. I believe that it is reasonable to say that MySpace is more popular with people not in college (i.e. in high school), and facebook is more popular with people in college. But as the people currently using facebook graduate and phase out and the people not currently using facebook phase in, they have to entice those people who already have a social networking service to switch over. And to do that they have to have more or better features than the other guy. Someone who primarily uses MySpace as a blog is going to open up facebook and say, “Now, wait a minute, where’s the blogging? This place sucks, I’m going back to MySpace!” That is the reason for facebook adding high schools to their repertoire, and all these other features. They’re trying to loop people in before they have a chance to switch, and keep people who switch inside.
Maybe that’s obvious to you, especially if you have any knowledge of business practices. You probably said to yourself, “Uhm, yep. You pretty much just described how every business on the planet operates.” But it seemed interesting at the time, to me. And since I’m waiting for Intro to Political Science to start, it was a good use of time.
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:02 pm
You know what this means?
I still need to kill “Tom” for thinking he’s my friend.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
facebook isn't the only one… xanga has been adding all kinds of new stuff as well. of course, I can't blame them. I do the same thing all the time. Just last week I added an impersonation of GW Bush and the "I'm so intrigued I'm going to raise one eyebrow and glance at you sideways" look to my repertoire just to compete with all those new college freshmen coming to town to steal my friends.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Who’s Tom?
August 24th, 2006 at 3:18 am
tom’s great. he’s totally already your friend as soon as you join up, and that way you don’t feel lonely not that you would since you can meet so many totally normal people on myspace. It’s like if facebook started you out with a friend already, or if your first day of school you were assigned someone to follow you around and tell you how cool you are. Life should come with more Tom’s, like, totally ohmy gosh, yeah!!!
August 24th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Tom’s a jerk. Him and his grin. My first move was to make him NOT my friend.