You're about two years too late to do benchmarks on myspace as a startup. They've re-written the thing at least twice over and put a whole lot more money into fixing it up by now.
Myspace's server software and html was bad. So so bad.
Myspace's server software and html was bad. So so bad.
As a very unscientific test, I just logged on to my Facebook account and my Myspace account and noted the following about my home pages:
Myspace html size: 16.38kb count of external .js files: 10 count of external .css files: 4 render mode: quirks load time (time to reload, thus assuming most requests cached, average of 3): 3191ms Facebook html size: 5.35kb count of external .js files: 27 count of external .css files: 25 render mode: standards load time (time to reload, thus assuming most requests cached, average of 3): 3207ms
I was surprised the load times were so close. MySpace feels slower but that may be because pages frequently include external images and sound files.
I don't mean these comparisions to either trash or promote MySpace or Facebook; instead I think it's instructive to consider which benchmarks translate to the best user experience and what techniques contribute to the better set of numbers.