Tuesday, February 20, 2007

"the tomster, the tommarinooooo. you are the friend i never Met! FABULOUS"

there are two bohemeths of the online social networking world, and they are myspace's tom and facebook's mark zuckerberg. alicia and i were going to present this as one of our point: counterpoints, but her myspace account is malfunctioning like a toaster in a bathtub. seems as though tom is already one in the hole. ANYWAY, the question: who would win in a fight? myspace tom or facebook mark zuckerberg?

this subject has been tackled before, in an inchoate discussion thread in the facebook group "all hail mark zuckerberg" and more prominently in the group " if 43902948.3 people join this group Mark Zuckerberg might fight Tom," but the majority of this group also belongs to the group "1,000,000,000 Browns Fans," so their ability to discuss the subject intelligently is immediately called into question.

as far as site success is concerned, myspace has more users, estimated at around 140 million. the facebook was created as a vehicle strictly for college student networking, not open to all, and was only recently expanded to workplace and regional networks, so it has less and is only the 7th busiest site on the internet. the most prominent feature of myspace is the blog, which facebook countered with the "notes" feature that i really think hasn't caught the wind like they wanted it to. facebook, however, trumps myspace in ease of use, site quality and security. myspace riddles computers with viruses, causes profiles to self-destruct, and routinely presents inexplicable error messages. it's allowance of non-uniform page layouts, music, photos on the comment wall, etc, makes it ugly and cluttered.

has anything about myspace changed since you joined? i can't even remember the original facebook because the current version is so different. facebook may have a team of five goons in an office in palo alto, california, but those kids are constantly working: they probably surf the facebook all day looking for things to improve. if you ever thought "boy, i wish facebook did this..." usually a few weeks later, it does.

last year, yahoo offered zuckerberg a cool billion to buy the company, but zukerberg declined, which leads me to my next point: zuckerberg is a badass. he comes into work in adidas sandals and turned down an 8am conference call because he said he'd still be in bed at that hour. he once had business cards that read "i'm ceo....bitch." do you want to mess with him? i thought so. tom is a more affable character: he extends friendship to every member and leaves his profile open for all to view. i immediately was able to learn that he loves battle-themed movies and his eclectic music taste ranges from guns n roses to the cardigans. he also declares himself "President of Myspace" which is kind of like saying you're the Mayor of America. zuckerberg, on the other hand, is cocooned by his site's own restrictions: i cannot view his profile because i'm not in the harvard or facebook networks. i suppose i could friend him, but would he accept? i can only learn about him by gleaning facts from articles written by outside sources.

one thing we do know about mark? despite his badass nature, he can admit when he's wrong. i submit to you the newsfeed riots of 2006. when millions of lameass facebook users flipped out because zuckerberg made stalking easier for them, he apologized. he stood by his improvements, but gave users the opt-out privacy controls. a badass who can admit when he's wrong? i can't even think of a pop culture icon to compare him to. zuckerberg is blazing his own trails.

but despite tom's openness, how well does he really know his 157271163 friends? has he read each of the 54769 comments? amy addiction says "tom, i love you lots" and someone with an indiscernable handle claims her husband is jealous of tom because she spends more time on myspace than she does with him. but is he really jealous of tom or of her keyboard? i point you to the introductory quote: he is the friend we don't know. mark doesn't extend faux friendship, you have to earn it. tom spreads himself too thin. he wants everyone to like him, and those people never get into fights, let alone win them. winner? mark zuckerberg, on site quality, sheer net worth and badassery.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

here's the thing: i don't care if you are a huge football fan or not, no one really cares about the superbowl unless their team is playing in it. i can't even remember who won the last handful of superbowls, other than last year's. no one in pittsburgh is going to be rioting in the streets tonight either way -- in fact, tomorrow, we'll all probably be thinking about when baseball season starts. which is funny: probably the single biggest sporting event in the given calendar year, and yet, as soon as it's over it's more or less meaningless. i don't remember who even played in that superbowl where janet jackson's nipple was exposed, but i do remember justin timberlake saying it was an "accident." guaranteed, no one cares that the Steelers won last year, except people in Pittsburgh, who will care forever.

that being said, it seems like a hell of a lot of people who have no allegiances to the Colts or the Bears seem to want the Colts to lose. i can think of a lot of teams I wouldn't want to win the Superbowl -- the Ravens, the Browns, the Eagles, the Patriots, the Bengals -- but the Colts aren't even an afterthought. even though this Superbowl is a pretty excellent matchup, all anyone can talk about is how much they want peyton manning to never, ever win a superbowl.

this actually doesn't make any sense. peyton is by far the best quarterback playing the game right now (i guess you could make an argument for brett favre, but he's obviously no longer at his peak), maybe the best since he's been in the league, on a short list for the past decade or two. however, everyone wants peyton to go down in the dan marino flames of great quarterbacks who never got a ring. peyton's definitely way better than tom brady, and that goon has won three already by the grace of adam vinateri's toe.

no one likes peyton manning, and i have no idea why. he (along with favre) is probably one of the best-marketed players in the NFL. brett favre has a lot more fans because everyone, whether they like it or not, knows every detail of his life story -- the struggle with painkiller addiction, his wife's illness, his dad's death, the loss of his home in Mississippi to katrina. its really hard not to want that guy to win. if i could be that guy's friend, i probably would. likewise, i can't think of a player that has been given more personality nationally than peyton manning. he makes carson palmer look like a whiny douchebag and tom brady look like a pretty boy who dates supermodels. petyon comes off way better even in comparison to eli, who is only really known for wanting to be drafted first at any cost, but not wanting to play for the chargers. peyton is the funny guy, the guy who roots for people in office jobs, the down-to-earth guy who realizes that football is just a game that he's lucky to be really fucking good at.

i don't know why everyone chooses to root against peyton when they have no reason at all to dislike him or the colts. despite the fact that the "never won a superbowl" argument is, in my opinion, a stupid one, the fact of the matter is, it will always be the asterisk next to his name, just like it is for jim kelly and dan marino. something in me really wants peyton, the susan lucci of the NFL, to slap everyone in the face this year.