Common Facebook and MySpace Mistakes

Firstly some explanation of the differences of MySpace and Facebook. MySpace is for the younger crowd to network and solicialize, where as Facebook is for the older crowd to connect and interact. Less porn, scammers, cyber bullies, and spammers on Facebook. I think partly why that's so is because the profiles on Facebook are private until you approve a person.

Common MySpace Mistakes: Everyone on MySpace uses some sort of theme. A theme is a layout which consists of a background image or color, font changes and an image for the contact table. Sometimes as nice as this is, it can contain a virus, as previously mentioned in one of my earlier articles. But there is yet important factors people don't think about when choosing their theme, and that is download time.

After you have set up your profile the way you like it, you need to test it to see how long it's taking to load. You can do that by using this: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

You have to be sure your profile isn't set to private other wise the test will not be able to run. The reason why you should run this test is because if you have music loaded to your profile, applications and images the load time will take entirely too long, and your visitors may not want to visit. Added to this, is the comments section of your MySpace. If you allow HTML comments in your MySpace page, this will take loading time of your webpage too. It's often why if you visit band MySpace pages, they will disallow HTML comments, so their visitors can hear their music quickly. Everyone is in a rush these days, and though you may think your page looks cool, it may not load cool. Even if you were to hide your comments on MySpace with a code I have, though they don't show up, they do still load. I've watched the IE toolbar at the bottom mentioning each image in my comments section load, though invisible to the naked eye.

A minor thing that a lot of users forget about is, the more you have for your top friends, the longer the page takes to load. If you have a top 40 instead of a top 10, that is 40 pictures that have to load, plus comments, and your theme. Some of your friends may be upset to not be in your top, but if your theme is large and you want it to load quickly you do need to cut back on top friends.
Common Facebook Mistakes: Facebook can become very addicting, very fast. The more connections you have the more invites you get, and suggestions of programs, tools, or games to add to your profile. The problem is, with adding all these gadgets its just like MySpaces theme, it can take forever to load.

I have over 300 connections on Facebook, of those 300 there are at least 40 who have over 70 applications added to their profile. I can't read their profile. It sends my system into Hyper-Threading and after almost locking up, I close it as soon as possible. I can not comment on their walls, thanking them for adding me, wishing them happy birthday, or even seeing their line of work. It's disappointing considering they are business connections. I also discovered that these complications only affect Windows users, as I had a friend on a Mac test some connections profiles.

Because Facebook's profile pages are private and can even be limited to certain people, it's impossible to perform the above mentioned speed test.

When a user adds the "Super Wall", the real fun begins. Facebook users then can add video, music, and pictures to your comments section. Most users will use the Super Wall simply because of the freedom you don't receive with the regular default Facebook's wall. Unless you tick the arrow to close up this wall, it will load each posting displayed for each visitor. I had this "Super Wall" on my profile for about a day, when suddenly everyone began posting crap I didn't want, nor need anywhere on my profile. I was insulted and shocked that people were posting this, at least with MySpace you have the ability to proving postings before they are displayed, not the case with Super Wall. It wasn't long before it starting to lock ME up when reviewing and editing my profile, I could only imagine what it was doing to my visitors, both friends and family.

I hope the explaining of these common mistakes users make on Facebook and MySpace helps. Feel free to pass this article on to friends, family and co-workers that you experience these common problems loading their profiles. It's easy to get carried away and forget that if you want connections and perhaps communication, people need to be able to load your profile.