top ten reasons why myspace is better than facebook

1. Traffic. No one can deny the masses that click their way to MySpace everyday. Hitwise data from December 2006 puts MySpace at No. 1, ahead of both Yahoo! and Google. They also have two subdomains in the Top 20. The mail domain comes in at No. 5 in traffic and their blog platform is No. 14. Facebook has respectable traffic, but fails to crack the Top 10. Want user data? How ’bout 155 million-plus and growing.
2. Brand leader. MySpace has become synonymous with “social networking for the masses.” Facebook, which used to have firm residence in the hip, college-only market position is now trying to out-MySpace MySpace. Ain’t happenin’.
3. Media powerhouse. Videos, music, concerts, films, comedy acts, IM and photos help make MySpace an impressive outlet to consume media today and is sure to only get more dominant in the future.
4. Rock ‘n’ roll will never die. In light of last night’s Grammy’s, one can’t deny the lock MySpace has as a centerpiece for every band that’s currently putting out music. Allowing users to feel like their one degree away from their favorite rock (and other categories) stars is a good position to be in.
5. Mo’ money. MySpace has an ownership with mega-wads of cash. Facebook doesn’t.
6. Rupert Murdoch. Don’t underestimate the power of experienced leadership, especially if that experience “gets it.” Murdoch is as smart as they come and knows media as well as anyone in the world. His empire is scary impressive.
7. Unique URLs. I can promote my own MySpace page using the following URL: http://www.myspace.com/jcheesman. Promoting my Facebook page isn’t as clear-cut. The growing number of movies and other media properties promoting their MySpace URLs in commercials and other mediums will only make this more important. Do you own myspace.com/YOURBRAND? You should.
8. Customizable pages. With varying degrees of Web design know-how, MySpace pages are easily customizable, even to the point where your page can vaguely look like MySpace at all. The Marines’ MySpace page is a good example of this. Facebook doesn’t allow such customization that I’m aware of. The only exception is for sponsors, and those seem to come with limitations and a price tag.
9. News Corporation and phat partners. If you take a look at the monster network MySpace belongs to known as News Corporation, it’s big and far-reaching. MySpace is global. And they have Google under contract to the tune of $900 million through 2010 running their search engine and contextual ads. EBay may be next. If things ever got bad at MySpace, falling back on such reserves is comforting.
10. Classifieds. MySpace has a platform by which users can post classifieds for free. No, it’s not Craigslist, but it’s a far greater leap than Facebook has made. The social networking leader is also in talks with eBay to deliver an auction platform. As far as jobs are concerned, MySpace users have access to the millions of jobs currently at Simply Hired as well. Will the deal with Jobster - who will have about the same job content as MySpace - make a big difference? We’ll have to wait and see. Interestingly, jobs posted on MySpace fail to make it to the vertical job search engines that I checked. Wonder why? At a minimum they should be on partner site Simply Hired.