Intersecting Minds: Education, Business and Technology at the North Carolina State Jenkins Graduate School of Management

“I don’t feel like getting picked up on by 55-year-old men,”

So said one of my classmates yesterday when we were talking about Myspace. And that in a nutshell describes why Facebook is now crushing Myspace in terms of total number of users and page views. Myspace is viewed as the land of creepsters and stalkers. Most people just don’t feel as safe on Myspace as they do on Facebook. I blew up my Myspace account a few weeks ago, and don’t have any regrets about it at all.

In contrast to Myspace, Facebook is clean, elegant and simple to use. It’s the equivalent of a plug’n'play system. Sign up. Enter information. Add friends. Go. Facebook also has amazing privacy settings, and as a result of these features, Facebook is now experiencing massive growth with older demographics. While I don’t have the hard data, the anecdotal evidence is everywhere. I saw a recent status message from a friend that read, “I’m a little worried when on my ‘People You May Know’ feature I don’t see two of my best friends… I see their Mom’s”

Facebook has now become the dominant design for social networking websites. Its user base is so massive (rapidly approaching 300 million worldwide) relative to other sites that it will continue on this hockey stick pattern for the foreseeable future.