I know, you think I am out of my mind, right? Before you go jumping to conclusions, hear me out on this one. One of the major differences is that while MySpace is closing down their network and trying to develop all widgets internally, Facebook has gone the opposite direction and opened up their platform to 3rd party developers (granted the 3rd parties have to adhere to their standards, but at least they are allowing 3rd party development).

OK, so they are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this one, but there are a lot of striking similarities that I am starting to see, and it makes me a little worried. I think that one of the great things that has made Facebook so popular is that it is a social network that crosses over to the real world (really, most people connect with those that they already know in their offline world). Beyond that, they have methodically launched feature sets at the right time, and for the most part, the community has been very accepting (with the exception of the News Feed, but everyone came around).

Facebook has become the defacto standard to follow when it comes to features in a social network, but I think that their opening up may actually be a bad thing. By allowing more outside content, opening up their network to almost anyone (long gone is the exclusiveness that drew people to it in the first place), and the ability to move content around on the page, this may actually hurt them. The more they open up and allow leads to more control over the page given to the user which in turn opens up their product to the vulnerabilities that plagues MySpace, the messiness that users ultimately make out of their profile. The one thing that they have not allowed is the customization of profiles (a la CSS modifications), so that is a good thing. I do hope that they do not go down this path, but if they do, I believe they will be opening the door for the next killer social network to move into it’s place (at the very least they will become MySpace and free up their space as number two for someone else).