Upon getting this review assignment, I knew right off the bat that Facebook was going to beat Friendster. Actually, I didn’t even know why my editor picked Friendster to compare against Facebook when Friendster had long been left behind the popularity race by other social networking sites like Multiply and MySpace. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t hate Friendster. In fact, I have been an active patron since 2003, and among my personal webpages, it’s my Friendster profile that I constantly maintain and update. Quite the opposite too, at the time that this assignment was given, my Facebook profile had only been two weeks old. I didn’t have a single friend or network, nor had I even the chance to play around the website yet.

So why was I so sure then that Facebook was going to win over Friendster? Simple: the hype.

We all know how tedious and inconvenient it is to maintain more than one social networking webpage, much more migrate from one to another. Unless of course if you’re an internet geek and has all the time in the world. But for normal fellas like me, having more than one social networking webpage is like owning multiple houses—you settle in one place you could call home and keep the others for vacation purposes only.

Similarly, Friendster had spawned a lot of social networking websites, yet I have remained loyal to it for four years now. Sure I did create personal profiles in other social networking websites, but I just did not have the patience to fully migrate to another “home”. If there was a time when I almost ditched Friendster for another, it was when MySpace came out and featured all those nifty and creative tools to enhance the look of your personal page. However, I still did not find learning the new system and fully migrating worth the hassle since most of my friends were in Friendster. MySpace hit it big in the West, but as an Asian, this also had little bearing to me because despite having lagged behind the race, Friendster at the time still remained Asia’s premiere site for social networking. What good is a cool-looking webpage if you’ve got no friends and close networks to appreciate it and interact with? Fortunately though, a few months later, Friendster underwent an overhaul and added similar creative tools rivaling that of MySpace, which also allowed its members to customize and personalize their Friendster profiles.

After the MySpace phenomenon though, there hasn’t really been anything new or novel that came out of the social networking community; and amid all those nascent social networking sites, my old-school Friendsters and I remained loyal to our first home.

And so after hearing some of these same, long time Friendsters rave about this new site, Facebook, a month or so ago, I got curious. And perhaps this is the reason why my editor had picked Friendster among the other social networking sites out there to battle against Facebook: even old dogs are eager to learn its new tricks.

But is Facebook really better than Friendster? I’d have to say that after building my Facebook site, adding friends and exploring the site, my original verdict had slightly changed.

THE LOOK: Preppy vs. Individuality
The first time I heard Facebook was about two months ago—in a casual family restaurant, uttered by a seemingly well-off, middle-aged mom from the table next to ours. They were talking about store equipments and family reunions when she asked her friend if she had already added him to her Facebook profile. I thought, cool, even the grown-ups have their version of Friendster. True enough, when I checked Facebook’s homepage, it looked like a business page—preppy, streamlined, simple layout, no distracting graphics or ads. In fact, the homepage was too simple that it almost looked snobbish; as if its stark contrast to the commonly jovial and juvenile layout of social networking websites was to set it apart and above them.

As I was building my Facebook profile, I realized that this element of Simplicity was also to be reinforced to the rest of the Facebook community. Unlike Friendster, editing your profile in Facebook simply meant that you could drag and drop boxes around your webpage. However, this “drag and drop” capability is also only restricted to secondary elements in your profile. You would not be able to change the background, fonts and colors, much more use CSS to customize the look of your profile. Facebook doesn’t even offer profile themed-templates to choose from. Users are stuck with that Arial-ish font type Facebook is using, and the colors white, blue and black.

This very limited level of profile customization is my primary gripe with Facebook. I’m the type who likes to get creative, and I want to be able to express myself and my personality through the look and the design of my profile page. Sure, you can post small graphics, videos, and quiz results on your Facebook profile through its Applications, but the preppy layout and white background just overpowers it all and makes the profile look like a resume.

This is quite unlike Friendster which gives its users almost the full hand in profile customization by permitting the use of CSS and scripts. For those who don’t have the luxury of time or the know-how in CSS, Friendster also offers numerous themed templates to choose from. Auto-play videos and music can be added in Friendster, and personal pictures or graphic designs can be used as profile backgrounds.

However, I’d hae to say that Facebook’s simple layout comes in nifty in terms of site navigation. The size of the font, headers and graphics are just right, the colors are comfortable for the eyes, and the uniformity of the layout makes it user-friendly and intuitive. Uploading applications is also easier and quicker in Facebook compared to Friendster. However, the trouble with this ease-of-use is that Facebook users in turn, load their profiles with tons of applications which only make their profiles look messy , cluttered and sometimes affected download performance.

One purely good thing about Facebook though is that it does not have random and annoying advertisements. Unlike Friendster which automatically posts ads from sponsors on your personal profile, Facebook only puts a neat and permanent link on your profile, aptly labeled “Marketplace”, which directs you to a dedicated site in Facebook for advertisements from Facebook users and sponsors.

THE FEEL: Similarities and Differences

Similar Features:

• Friend Updates
• Upload Photos and Videos
• Comments (Friendster)/ the Wall (Facebook)
• Send a Smile (Friendster)/ Poke (Facebook)
• Connect with School/ College Friends
• Fans Profiles
• Shout Out (Friendster)/ What am I doing right now (Facebook)
• Classifieds
• Bulletin Boards (Friendster)/ Events and Feed (Facebook)
• Send a Smile (Friendster)/ Poke (Facebook)
• Groups and Discussion Forums

Differences:

Level of Privacy

Both Friendster and Facebook have customizable privacy settings, and allow their users to choose what profile visitors can and cannot see. However, Facebook is stricter when it comes to privacy, as full viewing of profiles is restricted to 1st-degree friends only; whereas Friendster allows anyone, including non-registered Friendster browsers, to explore and view all “open” profiles.

Blogs

Friendster has its own blog-builder open to its users which works like and just as customizable as any other weblog publishing site. The Friendster blog is linked to the user profile page and opens up into a separate window when accessed. Facebook on the other hand, only allows users to post links to their external weblogs on their Facebook profiles.

Applications

Facebook’s Applications is what sets it apart from Friendster. Due to its restricted layout and small fonts, adding applications to the Facebook profile is easy as a breeze. Due to Facebook Platform which allows developers to create applications to be shared and used within the Facebook community, Facebook has a well of fun applications that users can add to their own and their friends’ profiles ranging from games, quizzes, polls, virtual gestures, etc.

Distinctly Friendster:
CSS customizable profiles.

Distinctly Facebook:

Gifts
This is a feature that allows users to send virtual gifts to their Facebook friends and networks.

Badges
This feature allows users to create their own Facebook profile widget that they can upload in other websites.

Business Solutions
Facebook also has a dedicated page that encourages employers, business owners and organizations to create Facebook profiles and use it as a tool to promote their businesses or groups, and to connect with members or customers.

THE VERDICT

LOOKS
Friendster: 4
Facebook: 3

EASE OF USE
Friendster: 4
Facebook: 5

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
Friendster: 3
Facebook: 5

Friendster: 11
Facebook : 13

Facebook wins by 2 points—not exactly the landslide win that I had originally projected though. In the end, it looks like Facebook really didn’t have that much difference after all in terms of features compared to Friendster. The ingenuity of Facebook though lies in its navigability and the Facebook Applications—the perfect combination to trap the current breed of short-attention-spanned online users. It took me about 5 minutes to build and “customize” my Facebook profile, but those fun Facebook applications glued me to my computer for two hours straight. And if I didn’t have something else to do, I’m sure I would’ve stayed longer than that. Facebook is like a one-stop entertainment hub where you can meet and interact with other people, play games, and try out all those trivial (and sometimes useless) applications simply for the sake of fun and enjoyment.

But will I migrate from Friendster to Facebook? I’d have to say not just yet. It depends on whether Facebook would consider allowing better customization of profiles to their users, and whether Friendster would take any action to improve its features and keep itself abreast with Facebook—just as it did with MySpace.