In the past few years they have become synonymous with the social networking phenomenon — and become rivals fighting each other for millions of users. On Friday, Internet giants Facebook and MySpace went head to head again, as they outlined audacious plans for the future.
Speaking in San Francisco, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said he would continue to plan to expand aggressively around the world. The head of MySpace, meanwhile, suggested that the company could bring out its own music player to rival the iPod.
The comments came at the Web 2.0 summit, an annual gathering of some of the world’s top technologists and investors. MySpace’s chief executive, Chris DeWolfe, said that he was focused on beating the economic downturn, initially through expanding its advertising program and also through the new MySpace Music site, which lets surfers buy and download tracks online.
But he also hinted that the social network could have a big target in its sights — Apple, the company behind the massively successful iPod. Asked whether the company would consider producing its own MP3 player to build on its reputation in online music, DeWolfe replied it was “possible.”
Zuckerberg said that he was not as interested in raking in profits as his competitors but would concentrate on continuing to expand the Web site. “Growth is our top priority,” he said. “The challenge that we have is to bring people along the whole path, first bring people along to Facebook, and make people comfortable with sharing information online. We got people through this really big hurdle of wanting to put up their full name, picture — their mobile phone number in many cases.”
Over the past year the two Web sites have been jostling for top spot. Facebook has seen remarkable growth in the last 12 months, growing from 50 million users at the start of 2008 to around 161 million users today, by some estimates, making it the world’s biggest active social network.
However, beyond potentially ground-breaking developments such as taking on Apple, DeWolfe said he thought the future of social networking would look much the same as it does today. “The starting-off point is always going to be your home page on the Internet,” he said.
“On that page you’ll have everything you’re passionate about ... and you’ll bounce off to whatever you’re interested in — the weather, sports scores, news headlines — whatever it is.”
Not everyone agrees, however. In his talk Zuckerberg hinted that bringing Facebook to mobile phones could be a crucial next step for the company.
The chance to take social networking truly mobile, taking advantage of increasingly popular phone technology such as built-in satellite location, is being touted by some as the next big thing.
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