From Photobucket to Zinio to Reddit, there are a vast amount of digital media platforms, each with unique functions. While sometimes features may overlap, each site has it’s own distinct characteristics and caters to different audiences. Below is a comparison between Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.
Remember passing notes back and forth in school? Now imagine passing notes between all of your closest friends, distant acquaintances, and random strangers you’ve never met. Twitter connects people and information via 140 character messages, called tweets. Users span the socioeconomic spectrum and include congressmen, single mothers, CEOs, call girls, teenagers and celebrities alike. With over 175 million members and, according to Twitter.com, over 95 million tweets a day, it is one of the top 10 ranked global sites on Alexa.com.
MySpace
In its day MySpace was the powerhouse of social networking. In fact, Mashable.com reported it as the top visited American website in 2006. But as the popularity of Facebook grew MySpace became a playground for preteens and spam, pushing a more mature audience to other sites. Still, MySpace does have an advantage over everyone else: it has a built-in media player. So far MySpace is still the best place for emerging musicians to showcase their musical talent and build their audience, making it a stable digital media platform.
The No. 2 global site as ranked by Alexa, Facebook is the social networking site. It is the subject of movies and webcomics, and combines the ability to update user status in real time and follow the news feeds of friends much like Twitter, as well as track friends as they check in to various locations around the city the way Foursquare does. It doesn’t have the blog feature or media player that MySpace does, but just about every blog, news service or online magazine uses the Facebook social plugin for readers to leave comments or to share with their friends.
