Although social networking service Friendster has gotten lots of publicity and venture capital, Myspace is close on their heels.  One of the explanations for the appeal of Myspace over Friendster is that Myspace has been aggressively adding new features while Friendster remains a "look at my pictures, see my network of friends" kind of thing.

Since I’d checked out Friendster and occasionally go back when I get a request to check out new pictures, I have a sense of the limits of what they offer.  But I hadn’t checked out Myspace until receiving an email from rapper Bavu Blakes of Austin/Dallas about his Myspace Music site.  There appear to be a lot of options, far more than Friendster has, and the topical focus seems like a good idea.  Bavu has been able to make pretty good use of it with such features as a streaming music video, an announcements blog, a schedule of upcoming concerts and a link to his homepage.  My only complaint based on seeing Bavu’s page, as well as a few others, is that the videos seem to start up automatically with each return.  Don’t know if it’s the users or Myspace, but it quickly becomes the thing I have to turn off in order to check out the site.