Facebook vs. New Myspace: It All Comes Down to Video

And so, the age-old battle continues: Facebook vs. MySpace.

Here is the plain reality: Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Sure, many may already be predicting it’s inevitable demise, but the fact remains that, unless they make a sudden, catastrophic business/design decision, the exodus from Facebook is going to be a slow one. Any thought that New MySpace is going to vengefully usurp Facebook isn’t one based in reality.

However, New MySpace will cause a few ripples and that is because they skillfully targeting a few key areas that Facebook has let slip by the wayside: design, music and video.

Let’s talk design and music briefly.

Design: Facebook started basic and chunky and over the years their user interface has not grown dramatically better. Facebook Timeline may be unique, but the side rails have become congested with advertising eye-sores as Zuckerberg scrambles to monetize Facebook. New MySpace looks pretty and seems to have harnessed the popular grid-like format of Pinterest. MySpace is paying attention to aesthetically pleasing trends, but, unfortunately, Facebook has proved that users will tolerate poor design as long as they can still figure it out. Victor: New MySpace, arguably.

Music: Facebook doesn’t even enter this category. Music was always MySpace’s thing. In fact, MySpace Music is the only thing that kept MySpace vaguely relevant for the last few years. Musicians have been loyal to MySpace since Facebook’s domination over 4 years ago. New MySpace will be equally music-friendly, but with the aforementioned improved design and a new “radio” section. Victor: New MySpace.

And now, to examine the ultimate unconquered domain, video:

Video shares best. We’re never going to be able to repeat that enough. Video sharing is obviously important to SolidLine Media, but it should be equally as important to our clients and any other brand out there. Video drives engagement. End of story.

However, neither MySpace nor Facebook have ever made it a point to facilitate video-sharing without the use of third-party websites. Sure, you can upload a video through Facebook, but it isn’t advisable. NewMyspace appears to have taken video into consideration, but not much further. New MySpace has added a video section to their new “Discover” page, but again this addition seems to be targeted at musicians and music videos. Play quality may be better than through Facebook, but that doesn’t say much.

These are two social media giants. Their entire purpose is to encourage sharing of all kinds and every fact and statistic is telling them that people love to share videos. But, for some reason, Facebook is focused on photos, MySpace remains focused on music and no one is focusing on video sharing.

Why? Can’t they build something? Or buy something? Facebook bought Instagram to maintain their dominance in photo-sharing, can’t they just snatch up a hearty video sharing site? Google did it.

At the end of the day neither Facebook nor New MySpace can claim to be best for video sharing. And neither seem to care. But that’s alright. MySpace has already died once, Facebook is nearly on life support and video production doesn’t need them. Even if New MySpace launched with sweet new video hosting capabilities, we wouldn’t make the switch from Vimeo and we doubt any other video production companies or filmmakers would. Like we said: video needs something built for video and built to measure video social analytics.

If you’ve started tinkering with New MySpace, let us know what you think in the comments below!