MySpace vs. Facebook (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
I just searched Google News for MySpace and Facebook, and was surprised at the difference in what I found. Of the first seven MySpace hits, five emphasized criminal acts, and two were PR-driven pieces.
Of the first seven hits on Facebook, only one involved legal worries (in an item that also included MySpace in the title), two items seemed PR-driven, and the other four were news features that included references to Facebook organically (through a profile of the Facebook founder, or a high school paper article about the online community).
Facebook is still owned by its boy-geek founder, while MySpace was recently bought out by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorporation (which also owns Fox, TV Guide, and HarperCollins). Of course this is not a scientific survey, but MySpace was referred to over 12,000 times in Google’s news database, while Facebook appeared only about 3000 times. Given that MySpace has about 80% of the social networking market share, and Facebook has only about 10%, Facebook is getting proportionately more positive press (though the coverage is not as broad, with an article in a high school paper happening to hold the top spot when I did my search this morning.)
Here are the first seven MySpace posts.
Here are the first Facebook hits (I’ve grouped the duplicates).
We’re drawn to activities that invite us to grow, by trying and trying again, because…
I had a great time playing Hastings in this audio adaptation of a classic Agatha…
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This is what we have to look forward to, as a torrent of AI-generated slop…