Do you ever say, “MySpace is sooo ugly?” This blog’s for you…

Look at the stats lately?
I love reading articles like this one and this one because it’s fun to see tech people try to understand why MySpace could thrive while being so "ugly." Similarly, in the the big Facebook lovefest over the last few months, I’ve had many conversations where people are shocked to hear how far MySpace is still far ahead on stats. For example:

MySpace has 2.2X the users of Facebook
MySpace has 1.4X the pageviews per visitor
MySpace has 85% more time on site than Facebook
etc, etc.

The reason why these numbers surprise people is simple: Silicon Valley people aren’t MySpace users. I’ve come to believe that Silicon Valley has a deeply emotional dislike of MySpace, which has nothing to do with the numbers. We (the Silicon Valley "we") don’t understand the aesthetics or the use cases around MySpace, which is likely driven by demographics, education level, etc.

Aesthetics and "Googley"-ness
In particular, I’m amused by folks I talk to that insist on every product being "Googley." What I mean by that is:

Simple
Functional
Easy

Sounds good, right?

Well, it’s great when you are trying to solve a problem, but what if you are trying to waste time? How do you make a time-wasting experience, in which the process (wasting time) directly translates to the outcome (time wasted)? In that case, you might prefer:

Lots of options – perceived as complicated
Entertaining – perceived as lacking a point
Layers of complexity – perceived as difficult

A couple example of this is to compare a process like checking into a hotel, which is directed and should be simple and easy, versus the design of a mall. In the hotel check-in, you want a polished and fast experience – get me from point A to point B. In a mall, you want to give people a lot of options, like eating or shopping or sitting around talking or whatever. In fact, to make a mall googley is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.

That’s partly why social networks tend to be a mishmash of a bunch of random, vaguely related features, rather than a clean flow that gets you from point A to point B.

Should social networks be social utilities?
Let’s go back to the aesthetics of MySpace, which is what everyone complains about. Instead of all the blinged-out profiles, which are basically Geocities 2.0, should social networks look like the "social utility" that Facebook bills itself out as? It absolutely looks cleaner and is more googley. In fact, a subtle distinction is that the profiles on Facebook are much more viewer-friendly, versus creator-friendly, whereas MySpace is arguably the opposite.

Interestingly enough, now with all the Facebook apps, you see people pimping out their profiles as much as they can – and I bet you that a very common tech support request at Facebook is "how can i change the color of my background?"

So going back to the aesthetics, I’ve always enjoyed making offline analogies to online behaviors since technology changes but people stay the same.

To me, MySpace looks like something very familiar – do you know what these are?

Scrapbooking and decoration as consumer behavior
If you’re not familiar, this is called scrapbooking and it’s basically photo albums++:

Read the Wikipedia article here
It’s a $2,500,000,000 (that’s a B) industry
The claim is that 1 in 3 households has a scrapbooker

… and finally, yes, people really do spend upwards of 40-60 hours per scrapbook making them look like that. It’s like offline Geocities… er, MySpace.

The demographic for this skews heavily female, but spans both teenagers to older, and is definitely has a lot of people in Middle America doing it. There are some religious linkages in there as well.

The MySpace and scrapbook aesthetic is very distinctive, and could be summarized as:

Mixed media (video/music/pictures/text for MySpace)
Disjointed look and feel from page-to-page or section-to-section
Flowery decorations including non-ironic use of cheesy imagery
Very people-centric (not information centric)
etc.

I don’t know about you, but this is not really how I use these sites. I tend to use these sites more as communication "tools" and crave functionality. And if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably like me. But the rest of the world is not like us, and that’s the problem.

As I’ve done research talking to dozens of MySpace users and people who
do artistic crafts like the above, I’ve come to the understanding that
this is what users want to do. This is how they want their profiles to look.
And it shocks me that for all the "openness"-loving, democratic culture
that the Bay Area has, there’s clearly a lot of snobbery when it comes
down to design and aesthetics.

I’m interested to see how people in the Bay Area think about MySpace over time. In the near-term, I’m going to try to immerse myself in all the things that are popular but derided here, such as:

NASCAR
UFC
Celeb gossip
Forums like Something Awful + GenMay
Counterstrike
Dr. Phil books
Oprah books
Any personal self-help book
Trashy romance novels
etc.

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http://kizzknows.com Rachel

Great perspective, Andrew. Sometimes it seems that the more intelligent a person becomes, the easier it is to forget that other people don’t think the same way they do. And that to me is the key difference between being smart and being wise. That said, your blog is quite wise!
Mark

Good analysis but I think one facet of your view must be wrong: “What if you are trying to waste time?” I am skeptical that many people have a goal to waste time. They are browsing for something unforeseen that will tickle their fancy. Cluttered complex arrays of media probably look more promising to people hunting for fun and curiosities. To a third party it might look like they are wasting their time but I doubt they mean to. I bet designers and developers will be more successful if they help people find specifically rewarding items and experiences, rather than merely giving them opportunities to waste time.
http://www.anywhere.fm Sachin Rekhi

Very insightful. I find a similar segmentation of experiences with music sites. You have the very utility-focused Pandora that is a functional music player whose main purpose is to efficiently deliver music to you that you will love. IMEEM on the other hand is much more focused on browsing, exploring, and just hanging out. What I wonder is whether one can effectively combine these experiences to cater to both sets of users without alienating either audience.
David

Andrew, I think you really nailed the difference between MySpace and Facebook – entertainment vs utility; creator-friendly vs viwer-friendly.

To Mark’s comment – “wasting time” equals “kill time”. sometimes we have nothing particular to do and just need to find something fun to do to get pass the time. So without any real goal in mind, we are exploring. This is when we need more choices to be presented to us because we don’t know what to search for.
http://profile.typekey.com/dmc500hats/ Dave

arfing brilliant.
http://atish.net atish

Well said. I think the most important point you made is “This is how they want their profiles to look.”

Who are we to objectively say that someone’s blinged out profile is ugly?

Snobbery indeed
http://www.myspace.com/buttergofrapp agnes

very spot on. perfect. brill.

- myspace and facebook user
J

As a nerd from South Georgia who’s been immersed in both cultures I can tell you: you may be aesthetically or intellectually repelled at times, but yer gone have you some fun!

Let me recommend a six pack of Bud heavy tall boys and UFC’s “40 Greatest Knockouts” to get you started.
http://sammyliu.com Sam

@Mark: I disagree. I am attempting to waste time at this very moment. Though, this post was definitely not a waste of my time.

In terms of this post: I feel as if some societies just have larger Myspace populations because myspace came out first and with fewer people on facebook, fewer are encouraged to make the switch. I also think Myspace is easier to be someone you’re not on, and with so many insecure, angsty teens out there, lol I guess Myspace is a better place to be?

And technically facebook was originally for college kids and not HS kids so that might be a factor.
Eric

Those statistics aren’t that important.

For example:
# MySpace has 2.2X the users of Facebook
I have an account at both, but rarely use my myspace account.

# MySpace has 1.4X the pageviews per visitor
When I DO view myspace I have missed out on a “lot” and therefore view many pages. Therefore, per visit I may hit 3 pages on myspace and only 2 on facebook. Overall, I use facebook more.

# MySpace has 85% more time on site than Facebook
I may spend 10 minutes a day on facebook, but often have myspace open for an hour so … to listen to music. There is a compelling reason to spend time beyond viewing friend’s profiles.

Sure, there may be more useful statistics, but remember these are often carefully selected statistics and reflect the worst case or best case depending on an author’s intentions.
http://www.mattmaroon.com Matthew Maroon

I’ve been harping on this forever on my blog and news.yc. I see Facebook vs. MySpace as a symbol of the overall population.
http://nabeel.typepad.com Nabeel Hyatt

@Mark – There is absolutely a”bored at work” crowd. Just to be a devil’s advocate though Andrew, you could take a look at some of the sociological research on entertainment that claims that it is indeed a utility to people. I had some of that around here somewhere…

Right on about the “creator-centric versus viewer-centric”
http://lsvp.wordpress.com jeremy liew

I think you’re talking about a distinction between the time rich and the time poor. You, me and many readers are time poor and sometimes we forget what it was like to be time rich. More at the Lightspeed blog where i talked about this a little while ago:

http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/time-rich-or-time-poor/
joe

Facebook is simple and clean, and in an attempt to be more serious and functional they have taken on the “aesthetics of work”. It’s quasi-professional and appeals primarily to the quasi-professional.

As a professional designer, I also have to say that I have seen really graphics-forward myspace pages, facebook is just better out of the box.

Oh, and its the music! Myspace has all the bands, why do you think I have myspace open right now on a tab I can’t see, I’m not updating my profile, I’m just listening.
http://www.aweissman.com/ Weissman

Great analysis AC.

Additionally, from a business perspective, all the attention on Facebook is the best thing to happen to MySpace.
Anthony

I think there are a few points to consider here:

1. MySpace has been around & available much, much longer than Facebook. Of course it has 2.2x the users. To me, that’s not exactly a meaningful stat.

2. MySpace is open. Facebook is not. Of course it has more “unique visitors”. Unique visitors does not equal logins or social activity. Try searching for a band or common person on Google – chances are you’ll find a MySpace page within the first few results. Chances also are you’ll stay on the page a while.

3. This is very important – The fact that facebook is, as you say, “Googley”, works against its stats. Just think about how much more page views facebook would have if it made you go to a new page every time you wanted to comment, update a basic status, upload & comment on multiple photos, etc etc. On the whole, I’m willing to bet that MySpace users require 2 or 3 page “views” for most actions that Facebook handles on the same page view via an AJAX update.

4. Facebook has advertising models MySpace wish it could reproduce. Maybe MySpace does serve up more ads because of the extra page views (see #3) and extra ad space it garners. But does it have sponsored groups? Sponsored news feed listings? Targeted & consistent data/demographics that is worth more to advertisers? No, it doesn’t.

The list goes on and on… In the end, the point is this: Facebook has a quality product, a quality userbase, and completely unique advertising models. Whereas MySpace plays into the hands of outdated metric systems by using older technology & more traditional advertising routes. Of course if you put Facebook up head-to-head against MySpace, using outdated measurement models, MySpace will win. It’s like trying to measure the fuel economy of a hybrid car using a model that was intended for fuel-only cars. You get exaggerated & falsified results in one direction or another.
Dave

Great article! I must say I am a bit of a cliche. A university student who only has a Facebook account. I was just getting a bit peeved at my MySpace account constantly being phished, then bullet ins going out advertising things using my names. Admittedly, being an ex-webpage designer, some of the profiles were shocking. Most of my friends are on Facebook as well, so I have no reason to have a MySpace account.

The one thing I do miss is finding out about all the great new bands. As I start recording my own music, it seems a great opportunity to share your music with the world. Facebook has applications that can do this, but it is not nearly as direct. For this reason, I maybe making a new MySpace account in the near future.

Snobbery? Maybe. I interact with people from many demographics. However, most of my friends are from the same demographic as me because that is the area I was brought up in.
http://www.myspace.com/britpabz Paul Armstrong

(Full disclosure – I work for MySpace)

Long before I worked for MySpace, I felt many of these things to be true. Thanks for posting Andrew.
http://www.makerminute.blogspot.com Be Still

Love your site! Hope on over to check out my scrapbookish picture frames… I’m a rookie scrapper, but I’d like to know what you think!
http://www.cstrikemovies.com Marcus

Thanks for the interesant article , this is for sure the blog for me :D keep it going
Kevin

Ya hit it right on the (pin)head… I'm in the middle of the country, Andrew, and alot of the women in my life do the scrapbook stuff. I was on MySpace for a short time last year (just got too busy elsewhere) and it was a great waste of time and fun too. Met some people that I still talk to, not type to, talk to.
Shana

Hence it helps to be between these sorts of cultural divides.
http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

Shana, are you between these two cultures? Would love to hear more, and how you perceive things.
http://www.facebooklicious.com/services/myspace-app-development MySpace Applications

ove your site! Hope on over to check out my scrapbookish picture frames… I'm a rookie scrapper, but I'd like to know what you think! Nice info. Thanks
http://www.facebooklicious.com/services/myspace-app-development MySpace Applications

ove your site! Hope on over to check out my scrapbookish picture frames… I'm a rookie scrapper, but I'd like to know what you think! Nice info. Thanks

@andrewchen