Assignment 1: Essay (Individual)

Question 1: Multimedia review

- MySpace VS Facebook

Review of the article

Social networking sites as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. Nowadays there are a lot of social networking site like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Twitter, Friendster, Imeem, Tagged, Ning and so on. All of the social networking sites want to be the best amongst themselves in services for their users. The issue now is which is the best whether MySpace or Facebook?

According to the article of MySpace vs. Facebook posted by Jeff on Tuesday, October 31, 2006, he states that Facebook is better than MySpace. It is because in MySpace there are too many spammers and make it quite vulnerable to spam. If the MySpace’s users know about HTML, they can do whatever design they like on their page to make it pretty but it is actually make it untidy. The author also said that the user interface of MySpace is not user friendly.

Facebook has a system of closed network. It is limited in the fact that you can only post the kind of media they allow, namely pictures and an endless stream of witty text comments on user walls, pictures and notes. So, in Facebook no negative element can be found. Facebook tends to still be very college-centric. The user interface elements on Facebook, including the dynamic display of UI, auto-complete features, etc., are top notch and perform very well.

The conclusion of this article is I disagree with the author’s point of view. If it is measure in multimedia aspect, I think that MySpace is better than Facebook. It is because no restriction using multimedia element in MySpace likes text, art, sound, animation, and video. So, it is allows users to enjoy with their favorite videos, music, concerts, films, comedy acts, IM and photos. To using multimedia element in Facebook, it is limited because only the media that they allowed can be post. So, Facebook page is not attractive, static and make user boring. Although there are many applications that user can found in Facebook, it is actually can make complicated and I also disagree that the interface in MySpace is not user friendly. For me, Facebook also look like the same as interface of MySpace. It depends on individual to think that it is user friendly interface or not.