BusinessWeek writer Steve Rosenbush is the latest sipper of the Facebook Kool-Aid, putting a positive spin on its "sell for $2 billion" plan in his latest article. (Tuesday morning drinking game: take a shot every time he follows a doubt with a "but" — as in, "Facebook doesn't match the scale of MySpace, but...")

Damn that pesky MySpace, always setting an industry standard! Two billion dollars would be nearly four times the price of Myspace. Some analysts think Facebook has a chance. But three things stand in the way.

1. All the cool kids are at Myspace.

This image was lost some time after publication.

A social site gets stronger with every user. And sure, plenty of MySpace's users are teens in emo bands and Burger King jobs, but pageviews are pageviews — and those kids loaded 23.5 billion MySpace pages in February.

After the jump, the two other reasons: Open-source fugliness and dropping coolness.

Facebook's on the Block [BusinessWeek]

2. Myspace is not afraid to be ugly.

This image was lost some time after publication.

The fugly factor: MySpace gets 4 points for interstitial ads and 6 for strangers popping up on users' home pages. But it nets a good 40 fugly-points or so for a liberal page structure that lets users put black text on black backgrounds, embed video in comments, and auto-play Aqualung. Teens love to get fugly, and Myspace lets them. Facebook is just a white little world.

3. It's just not cool any more.

This image was lost some time after publication.

Social sites are no longer cool. Would mobile phones make them cooler? Only if ringtones figure into it.
Source: conversations with Myspace-using teens