What MySpace-Facebook Rivalry?

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These differences go way beyond the oft-repeated and oft-dismissed explanation that MySpace is a media company and Facebook is a technology company. Here's a sampling:

• Leadership: DeWolfe is coiffed, polished, and acts like an executive. Zuckerberg is awkward and taciturn, saying what's on his mind and little more. He cares nothing of the "scene," be it glitzy Los Angeles or geek-chic Silicon Valley.

Contrast MySpace's San Francisco soirée with the "hackathon" held in the same city in honor of Facebook's announcement in May that it's opening to third-party developers. The hackathon was the closest the company has come to throwing a lavish event, and it was strictly for nerds. The open bar consisted of Red Bull, water, and sodas. The vibe was guys sitting in clusters around computers coding. The food was piles of pizza boxes and large troughs of Chinese food. I don't know DeWolfe, but my guess is if you call him "uncool," he might politely bristle. Zuckerberg would likely shrug and say, "Yeah, and?"

• Capitalization: MySpace is part of a larger company; Facebook is trying to become a large company. This contrast plays a huge role in virtually every barometer of a company's ethos, from capacity to innovate to pressure to make money, and importantly, its ability to recruit talent. In Silicon Valley, the top engineers want to be at the hot startup, pre-initial public offering. It doesn't make financial sense for someone to take roughly the same job at MySpace they can get at Facebook right now. And in companies like these, engineering talent is paramount.

• Hometown: MySpace lives in a city where the entertainment industry dominates. Facebook lives in a city where technology is king. So, right now Zuckerberg is among the biggest celebrities in the Valley, but down in Los Angeles, DeWolfe would line up far behind the likes of Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Lindsay Lohan. This could prove an advantage for MySpace. Managing the Silicon Valley hype cycle and its backlash is challenging and distracting, as if building a $10 billion company weren't hard enough.

• Mission: MySpace is all about self-expression—doing whatever you want with your page, leavening it with heavy doses of pop culture. It is a very new kind of media company. People go there to be entertained. Facebook is about creating a utility to efficiently manage your day-to-day world. On MySpace, part of the fun is roaming around friends' pages, hearing their music blare out at you, seeing how they've designed their "space." Facebook has a News Feed feature that lets people just open a home page to see every change in their virtual neighborhood.

Of course, there is overlap between the two largest social networking companies. There's only so much media attention that can be lavished, only so many hours people have to spend online, and at some point a limit to the ad dollars, too. But it's a bit like comparing eBay (EBAY) to Amazon (AMZN). You might be able to buy nearly anything on either site, but the experience, price, business models, and market valuations couldn't be more different.

Sarah Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years, most recently covering technology for BusinessWeek. Her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, will be published by Gotham Books in May, 2008. She is also Silicon Valley host of Yahoo Finance's Tech Ticker.