In reply to MyCube’s follow-up article to my earlier blog post:

Yes, I agree with this response. I want to reiterate that with my blog post, I am not saying people should leave Facebook for MyCube and I do understand the suggestion to use both but for different levels of sharing. One should consider however that Facebook has demonstrated that the average user is not willing to devote considerable time across several platforms - especially if the feature set is similar. People use both Twitter and Facebook because they perceive them as serving different purposes. Twitter really doesn’t require a lot of time from the user. By contrast, MySpace massively bled users to facebook because the average non-band user did indeed want to spend a lot of time at the party but didn’t ultimately want to be bombarded with large flashy ads that interrupted their social time. They also wanted to have more credible selection of ‘friends’, which came with facebook’s push against anonymity. Rather than MySpace’s random spammers constantly requesting your friendship, on Facebook it was real people that you really know even if only as acquaintances through others.

It is true that I did leave facebook in protest to their privacy bungles and after a couple weeks away haven’t missed it. It was a personal choice - not a recommendation for others. I also didn’t really trade facebook for MyCube. MyCube is barely a reality at this point. I am not sure yet whether MyCube is a viable alternative to facebook but I will say that there is potential. The success of MyCube will depend on many, many factors. So far, I’d say I am intrigued with the site and pleased with the bent on privacy and ownership. I also really like the social exchange concept and look forward to seeing how that develops over time.