14 DAY TRIAL // Why bother coming up with something new and attractive when you could as well take it from your rival? This is what MySpace seems to be hinting at. Facebook's "news feeds" about those people important to a user are the main issue at hand.
Peter Levinsohn, President of News Corporation's Fox Interactive Media (FIM) told the Reuters Media Summit that "The concept of a news feed is something we are very focused on, and we'll be well down the path in the next 30 to 45 days." The news feeds have been one of the most popular features of Facebook, so it's clear why MySpace would be looking to? erm? "incorporate" them to its package of services that it presents its users with.
In addition to that "original" announcement, Levinsohn also said that his company plans to let users express different versions of themselves by creating more than one profile, one for school and classmates, one for family and one for friends, for example. At this rate, all the free time a user has will be spent on updating every profile he has, and because the targets for all are different, he won't be able to just copy/paste from one end to another. I mean I wouldn't want to let my grandmother know how last night went and how I went from bar to pub to club, that's for my friends alone. Not that I did that anyway.
Levinsohn said that "the new feature will let you express yourself in all those different segments." I bet it will, that's the reason they are adding it, the only thing that still remains to be decided is the usefulness of it for the laid back users that care not about privacy and just put the information there for all to have it. And with this, we go back to Facebook's current scandal. It must be like a closed circle, if you get the good stuff, you are invariably going to get the bad parts as well.