Social Spaces : Facebook versus MySpace versus Google Plus Team : Collyn, Robert, Pat, Martin

1. Social Spaces: Facebook versus MySpace versus Google Plus • Team : Collyn, Robert, Pat, Martin • Each Social Spacediscussedunder the followingheadings • Profile • Gap-Identified • TechnologyEmployed • Solutions and Sustainability • Discussion

2. MySpace

3. Introduction- company profiles Firstly... MySpace • My Space was started by a group of E-Universe employees in Los Angeles 2003 • At its peak MySpace had 16000 workers and had its 100 million subscribers in 2008. Mission statement: Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalised experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events.

4. Gap Identified MySpace • Anyone who visits MySpace can see relatively quickly that Music is important to its users. From the very beginning users would friend people with a similar tastes in music. • Sharing your taste in music meant sharing videos of bands and friend bands pages • At the time in 2003 paper magazines were popular, my space was perceived as an online rival to the magazine industry, with the additional features of videos and real time communication

5. Technology Employed MySpace • Cold Fusion technology was employed for the main site • Additional service for example • (IM) Instant message , Karaoke • were built in house • Games were outsourced

6. COMPETITORS • Friendster • Magazines • Tribe.net • Bebo • Facebook

7. SOLUTION • A platform for new music /bands • Communication for like minded people

8. SUSTAINABILITY • News CORP (good riddance) • New Blood (Timberlake) • New Image, simple website

9. Facebook

10. Introduction- company profiles Facebook • The brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, a computer science and psychology double major from Harvard, • Facebook in his own words is “as much psychology and sociology as it is technology” (Larson, 2011). • From humble beginnings of a dorm room start-up to the world’s most popular online social. • Launched February 2004, as of February 2012 Facebook has more than 845 million active users Mission Statement: “Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

11. Gap Identified FaceBook Why, how did it all come about? Zuckerberg had already witnessed the demand for this new social space with his creations Coursematch and Facemash. • Coursematch allowed users to choose the courses they would take based on who else was taking them • Facemash allowed users to rate other Harvard student’s attractiveness

12. Technology Employed FaceBook Open Source Software • Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP with Memcache • From 1 to over 10,000 servers scalability has always been an issue. • The ethos behind open source software has not been lost by engineers within Facebook. They contribute to the open source community by working on projects like Apache Hadoop, Apache HBase, Cfengine, memcached, Varnish and PHP

13. Competitors FaceBook • Top social networking sites listed by Ebiz for February 2012; Linkedin, MySpace and Twitter are still well behind Facebook both by number of registered and active users. • Facebook has been competing with Linkedin and MySpace for user’s attention since it started. • Facebook overtook the worldwide figures of MySpace in 2008 but it took another two years to reach the top of the US figures

14. Solution FaceBook Facebook differentiated itself from MySpace by only allowing college students to join at first, MySpace was open to all. The slow and steady pace of Facebook use in the college campuses across the US and Europe was a targeted approach

15. Challenges FaceBook • Increase revenue from advertising without losing users • Pushback from users over privacy concerns • Control issues – Zuckerberg has too much power? • Advertising spending and attention shifting to Google+(Listed in Facebooks IPO risks) • New players in the “Socialverse”

16. Google +

17. Introduction- company profiles Google + • Google Plus is the youngest of the three social networking sites. • At eight months old, it claims a membership of 150,000,000 users. • or 90,000,000 …. • or 60,000,000 …. Mission Statement: “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”

18. Gap Identified GooglePlus+ Google needs to access the social networking market Why? • To enhance its underlying search engine. Smart searching involves knowing your customer • Google is in need of a successful social networking product. After a succession of failures (Google Wave, Google Buzz, Orkut (big in Brazil), Google Groups) • May be targeting an older age range • While Facebook has been a phenomenal success, it has left many users disenchanted - for example privacy settings.

19. Technologies Used 1: The server side code of Google Plus is written in Java.2: Java servlets have been used along with Guice framework.3: On the client side the code is mainly in JavaScript.4: Closure framework has been used to develop the UI. The templating system of Closure has been used widely to produce efficient Java and JavaScript code.5: HTML5 History API has been used to maintain pretty looking URLs although Google Plus is an AJAX web app. For older browsers with no support of HTML5 History APIs, hash fragments are used as a substitute.6: The back end data storage is supported by BigTable and Colossus/GFS. MapReduce is also used in the backend.

20. Competitors Facebook LinkedIn Twitter MySpace Skype User Apathy Backlash regarding privacy

21. Solutions • Due to the sheer size of Google, they can afford to stay around in the market. • Appeal to a more mature audience (as per the Barack Obama hangout) • Google has group video chat....Facebook doesn’t. • As long as their search engine is a success, they have a captive audience.

22. SWOT Analysis

23. EndIs this the present leading to the future.......the transition of change?Thank YOU