August 19, 2008
Posted: 1835 GMT

This week Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel is slated to unveil a new profile page on Facebook. Not surprising considering almost every media company is scrambling to reclaim the eyeballs that are leaving traditional TV.

What is odd is that Fox's parent, Newscorp, owns one of Facebook's main rivals MySpace. In fact they paid $580 million for the social networking site back in 2005.

Why would they turn to the competitor? Joel Cheatwood, senior vice president for development, told Wired magazine among others that Facebook's users were "a little older and more sophisticated."

Is this true? I am asking because I am thinking of finally dipping my toe in.

As some of you may have already guessed from my previous blogs, I am falling miserably behind the times.

The digital hub in my home consists of an alarm clock. I barely I have time to load my iPod and I can't work the camera on my cell phone. This can't continue.

Facebook took over the global lead among social networking sites back in April. I know a few people who have recently joined and helped nudged those numbers up.

But there is a lot of competition. According to comScore, Hi5 has been growing rapidly. MySpace, Friendster and Bebo are also up there.

And hitting U.S. shores in the next couple of weeks is a new social networking site tailored to specifically to sports fans, sportsfanlive.com. Created by David Katz, an alumnus of Yahoo, the site promises extensive news and fun features like one that will allow users to track bars where fans are gathering to cheer on teams.

Do you have any advice on which to choose? Does Facebook have the most sophisticated audience? Or is the fact that I am finally thinking about joining up a sign that social networking is already past it?

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Filed under: Business


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notafan   August 20th, 2008 2118 GMT

i just joined facebook and would not like to get unplugges from all things digital...snail mail anyone?

Brian   September 3rd, 2008 1351 GMT

A lot of people actually have pages built on both MySpace and Facebook. I wouldn't say one site has a more sophisticated audience than the other – it's about who you're communicating with. Personally, I prefer MySpace. :)

alejandro grande   September 13th, 2008 435 GMT

I can´t remember how many times I was invited to join Face book and the others, and more and more I´m feeling like a virgin, people is really angry with me: how you dare not to join facebook?, who you think you are?...and reading your article I came up with an idea : I'm going to sell my face-book-virginity!
Any suggestions about the starting offer?

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