MySpace Mashup with Facebook splatters social synergy all over you
MySpace users can now log in to Facebook through their MySpace page and vice versa, leveraging core strengths and shifting paradigms.
MySpace and Facebook have come together to create Mashup with Facebook. The deal lets MySpace users log in to Facebook through their MySpace page and vice versa, leveraging core strengths, shifting paradigms and splattering synergy all over your face.
On the face of it, this looks like MySpace capitulating to the young pretender, but both sides benefit. MySpace gets access to Facebook's vastly bigger user base. But Facebook gets to turn its database of Likes from a static list on users' profiles to actual, artist-created content. When you Like something, it currently links you to a fan page on Facebook, but fan pages are often not updated by the artist -- MySpace profiles tend to be much richer.
Facebook, now standing at more than 500 million users, overtook MySpace as a social network some time ago; MySpace currently has around 130 million users. In response, MySpace has shifted away from the social-network model, focusing on the thing it does best: creating a network of pages for bands, films, shops and other content providers.
To be a part of the social network synergy, log into Facebook from your MySpace account. Click Allow for MySpace to access your Facebook Likes, and put your feet up while the two sites make sweet Like. You'll then see the Likes and interests that you've clicked on Facebook, and you can choose which you want to add to your MySpace home page, giving you a feed of the stuff you enjoy.
At least that's the theory: we tried it, and were informed by MySpace that, "An unexpected error has happend [sic]". Oh right.
Facebook's recent moves to entwine itself in the fabric of the Web are designed to prevent itself stagnating the way other social networks have. Facebook places itself at the heart of what it calls your 'social graph', a spiderweb that links the network with other sites and services.
From adding the Like button to other websites -- feel free to click the one above -- to Facebook Connect login, from the new Messages system that pulls in your email and text messages to the rumoured Facebook phone, Mark Zuckerberg is extending his tentacles to every aspect of your online life to ensure you're using Facebook even when you're not using Facebook.
Is this enough to get you back on MySpace -- or did you never leave? And tell us what you think of MySpace's new logo, which looks like this: my_____. See what they did there? What a bunch of _____.