The last few years, this whole concept of community websites has been large. Everybody wants to be a part of a peer group of similar people, and everybody wants to hook up. It’s true. I’m going to name a few community portal type sites that I deem to be simply hopeless, and why :

• Nexopia (www.nexopia.com) : It’s simply hideous in its design. It’s not a design that is “Not too good”, but instead, it’s a design that is “Ugly”. The system is so slow. It just gives off an “immature” vibe that attracts mostly underage kids. The system is not as intuitive. You can search people, add them as friends, leave msgs for each other.
• MSN Live Spaces(spaces.live.com) : Another valiant attempt by Microsoft to follow suit with the waves of community sites. It has a neat design, fancy layout and etc. But it allows too much customization of each person’s space, that it got to a point where all the pages are too busy and too messy by the horrendous coloring-work done by the general public with no knowledge of such things. It’s frustrating to watch. It doesn’t have a good update system about all your friends’ statuses, new additions, etc.
• MySpace(www.myspace.com) : The worst thing about MySpace is the fact that each user’s pages can be so messy. It’s much worse than MSN Live Spaces, and some of the pages are simply disgusting. Also, MySpace still lacks the global update of all your friends’ activities, and an intelligent synchronization between different sections of the site.

Here’s what makes Facebook so much better and intelligent than the rest…Here’s why I believe facebook will ultimately be the next big winner of community/friends websites.

• Facebook has a main page that you see upon log in that gives you recent activities from all of your friends. Take a look at my sample screen here. Whenever somebody new joins facebook that knows your friend, you can see it right away, which makes the whole connection thing easier. No more “Oh you have facebook too?” Chances, are if your friend has facebook, you already saw him/her coming up on this screen and added each other as a friend. This basically accomplishes the main objective of these websites so much better than any other sites - to connect with friends and be updated. I just added an old friend from highschool to my friends list that way, and found out she just left for Tanzania! How cool is that to be easily updated that way?
• Interactive shares. You can post events, notes, links and what not, and they will be on the main page for all your friends when they log in, so they can get a very good overview of what’s happening. I’ve seen so many people invite everybody to parties/gatherings simply via facebook, because everybody is guaranteed to see it! It works very well. Also, I had a friend who urgently needed a favour from somebody who lived downtown. I easily found this note right after I logged in, and I was able to get in touch with him the same day he asked for the favour.
• Photo tagging - Facebook has a very intelligent system where you can draw squares around a person’s face as you upload photos, and you can tag them as one of your friends on your friends list. So, when you upload a photo of your friends Steph, Jen and Jordan, all 3 will know it right away as well as the rest of the people on your friends list.
• Facebook has a wall system that is much more intuitive to use than any other message boards conceived by the above websites. When you see a friend who posted on your wall, you can post on that person’s wall with one click. Also there is quick link to see comments between you and that specific friend to see it in a dialogue format so you know what the hell you guys are talking about!
• Facebook offers a standardized profile platform without options to change colors or looks very much. While some may view this as limiting, this is actually a great feature to keep the website clean, consistent, and easy to navigate. Many other websites allow too much user control, that some of the pages take forever to load, and looks very messy.
• Facebook is built so well with Javascript, AJAX, and CSS that so many operations can be done within the page without having to refresh the page. This makes it easier for the user to perform functions, and do it faster. Many things can be done without a page reload. That is something that MySpace, Nexopia and the rest of them lack completely.
• Facebook embeds their corporate advertisements in a much cleaner way, without colorful/annoying banners. While this may change over time if they get greedy for money, so far they are doing very good. The advertisements show up as part of the website’s notifications in a rather sublime and sneaky way. It’s actually quite nice, in my opinion, and probably is more effective in terms of it’s click ratio and ROI.

Now, let me explain, from a business perspective why Facebook is better.

• Advanced AJAX/Javascript schemes reduce the amount of page refreshes, which reduces the bandwidth very significantly. Their servers will return results faster, and will cost less. This is a polar opposite of Nexopia.
• Also, less pageviews mean that each advertisement screen is exposed for a longer time, which increases the CPM value for corporate advertising.
• The wealth of well-woven features make this a central hub for all of your friends and their events as well as updates. This is a revolutionary thing compared to other previous websites of the sort, and will increase the value of this website when they finally get a buy-out offer from MSN or Google or Apple.

Any other comments and additions to my posts are appreciated!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Marketing and Media, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.