Entry 3 : IN THE WORLD OF SOCIAL NETWORK

Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004. Within a short span of 7 years, Facebook has attracted more than 600 millions active users. A January 2009 Complete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-decade "best-of-list". Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010. According to Social Media Today as of April 2010, it is estimated that 41.6% of the U.S. population has a Facebook account. So what exactly is it about facebook that makes it so much popular and attractive than the rest of the fellow networking sites?

Curiosity killed the cat and I have decided to compare Facebook and Friendster. Friendster is another social networking site which used to loved by many, however, this is before the birth of facebook.
1. Target Audiences
In terms of audience, Facebook became of the primary websites in the West, because it was originally a social servicing site invented for Harvard, than later for Yale and many other prestigious campuses. Friendster, on the other hand, has a huge share of subscriber across Asia (about 90% of the traffic). This is especially so in Philippines, where it still retains its top position amidst the heavy competition from Facebook and Myspace. However, since the Facebook fever is rampant, more than half a Friendster account is closed or deleted by the owner. They (member Friendster) move en masse to the Facebook.

Currently, Facebook is the most visited social networking site as compared to Friendster. With an Alexa rank of 2, compared to Friendster’s 2,501,611 , Facebook has the most number of unique monthly visitors worldwide.

2. Interface
The no-nonsense Facebook homepage emits an air of friendliness. It is incorporated with major friendly applications, such as Farmville, and the unique video and picture tagging technology. These features made the site more fun, as people can now play various games such as poker in their sites. In addition, it allows more interaction as you and your friends can play the same games and compare the game scores subsequently.

To combat the competition from Facebook, Friendster has revamped and released a brand new display with green design. It has also introduced new Games Section for its members to play with. However, the games are limited and it allows little interaction with you and your friends.
Friendster still pales in comparion with regard to features such as applications, games, video and even picture tagging. This is definitely hampering its popularity than its rival, Facebook.

3. Security
To control privacy, Facebook has advantages compared to Friendster. Facebook has built-in privacy settings. These are designed to help you protect personal information and your account itself from crooks that are up to no good. As part of the new privacy settings change, the Profile Information section has been revamped and broken down into a granular level of access based on the information you can enter. Here you can control who has access to things you have entered in Personal Info, About Me, Religious views, Political views, your wall posts, video posts, photos, and comments.

In contrast, these security features are lacking in friendster. There are a lot of posers and scammers registered in Friendster than in Facebook, which makes it more vulnerable to scam and the likes. The harsh path that Friendster has taken looses its credibility in the networking arena.

Personally, I still prefered Facebook due to its user-friendly interface, fun applications and not to mention, majority of my friends are on Facebook. Unfortunately, Friendster is losing some of the precious users, if they could improve by making revisions of some applications and design they had embedded on the program, it would certainly assure its longevity to last for another five years.

However, as of now, Facebooks marks the giant of all networking sites.