Why Facebook will never have more page views than Myspace
There has been speculation recently that a study showing that Facebook pageviews actually declined in the past month (even though unique visitors have increased) somehow shows that Facebook won’t be able to overtake Myspace. In reality, the very fact that there were fewer pageviews is evidence that Facebook is better than Myspace.
That’s because Facebook is much more efficient. For every basic action, whether it’s checking someone’s profile or logging out of your account, it normally takes two different pages at Mypace for every page view at Facebook. For instance, if you log out of your account at Myspace, it takes you to an advertisement where you have to click “return to site” if you want to log in again. There’s two page views while for Facebook you only have one page view for the same exact action.
Facebook also has a convenient news feed so you don’t have to visit every individual friend profile to keep up with what’s going on in a person’s life. They have far fewer error messages as well. Plus they load more quickly and you don’t have to keep clicking “refresh” every five seconds to try to boot the page into submission.
The rise of unique visitors should be more indicative of success, and in that arena, Facebook is doing well.
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There was also that story about how facebook attracted a more educated user than myspace. What was up with that? Maybe that killed it; maybe no one wants to blog around with a bunch of stuffy overeducated bafoons? Anyway, I find My Space to be pretty complicated, but though I am overeducated, I’m also kind of dumb.
Yeah, I read that too. I don’t think it’s that Myspace it complicated, it’s just badly designed and not user friendly.
MySpace is losing the interest of some people because it is buggy. Sending bulletins and posting blogs and blog comments have all had issues within the past few months. Granted, it is free, but it is frustrating.
MySpace also has loads more spam that FaceBook (at least in my experience).
And, as you point out, Facebook’s feeds are more automated. There is also the open platform, and, while that will make FaceBook more complicated initially, once it all levels out it will make it a much richer environment.