Your status is everywhere you want it to be
.jpg "Twitter and MySpace")
Conan O'Brien is psychic! Image from Wikimedia.
A few months ago on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” he joked that “In the year 3000 YouTube, Twitter & Facebook will merge into one super time wasting website called YouTwitFace.” However, it seems this possibility will be come a reality much sooner than the year 3000.
Facebook users have long had the ability to have their Twitter status updated automatically to match their Facebook status. Now, in its usual fashion of doing everything Facebook does after it does it, MySpace has the same capability with Twitter.
Swapping status stories
You can set your MySpace page to automatically update your Twitter, vice versa, or both. If you are keeping track, this means that if you have a Facebook, Twitter and MySpace account, you can set Facebook to automatically update Twitter, which will automatically update MySpace. Voila, everyone knows what you’re up to.
Though MySpace has been around a lot longer than Facebook, it has always been behind the curve on innovation and applications. Lately it seems MySpace simply copies whatever Facebook does. Facebook added status updates first, news feeds first and games first. I suppose it could be argued, though, that MySpace had the social network web site structure first.
Social network competition
MySpace remains the most popular social network in the U.S. in terms of number of users, though traffic is less frequent than Facebook traffic. Facebook has the highest number of users worldwide. Twitter seems to have managed to differentiate itself from these two sites enough that it is able to work with these two social networking giants instead of competing with them. Good thinking, Twitter.
More and more MySpace users now are turning to Facebook, either to create an additional profile or to replace their MySpace profile. Many MySpace members don’t use their profiles often but don’t bother deleting them, which might explain why MySpace has more U.S. members even though most people nowadays prefer Facebook.
Twitter is the tie that binds
However, as I explained before, it’s now possible to update your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace statuses simultaneously, making it possible to keep your MySpace profile active without really doing any extra work. I can see how this function would be useful. Many people use Facebook and Twitter status updates to get a question or piece of information to as many people as possible at the same time.
This new feature that allows Twitter and MySpace to interact with each other means you can potentially reach even more people simultaneously. However, unless you are not MySpace friends or Facebook friends with your Twitter followers, I recommend you use this function wisely.
Personally, I get frustrated reading the same thing over again. I use Twitter and Facebook, and almost everyone I follow on Twitter is also my Facebook friend. Sometimes I wonder why my Twitter followers think that I need to read about how much they like puppies twice. Then again, my status updates — particularly the ones alerting people to the fact that I am thinking about pizza — probably don’t even need to be read once.
Discussion of MySpace and Twitter Sync Up as MySpace Tries to Keep Up