Class Divisions between Facebook and Myspace
Danah Boyd argues that there is a statistically relevant socio-economic divide between Facebook and MySpace users:
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.
MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
it is an interesting argument, yet I don’t fully buy into it. Mathew Ingram points out that Danah admits that these differences are likely based upon the origins of the two different forums:
Boyd admits that some of these differences are likely a result of the ways in which Facebook and MySpace evolved. The latter started as a social network for music fans to share information about their favourite bands, whereas Facebook started as a social network that was restricted to university students and faculty — and therefore has had a collegiate type of appeal ever since.
At the same time, Danah says that the division is similar in the military:
A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook.
Officers are also more likely to have a college education, so I think there is a link between the two here.
To me, the division between the two stems form the simple fact that social networks became popular about two years ago. Those who were in college at that point started using Facebook. Kids in high school were using MySpace because Facebook wouldn’t let them in. Once they moved on to college, they used facebook because that was what everybody else was using. Those who didn’t go to college stayed on MySpace.
The problem for MySpace now would be that this might be quite a turn-off for MySpace’s valuation, as Deep Jive Interests argues.
But the kind of reputation that Myspace now has — is that a fit for Yahoo? Is that a fit for *any* brand that has the reserves to cash out Rupert Murdoch?
Does Microsoft want to be associated with ” immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, and queer kids”?
Just as a sidenote, I would also argue to be just a bit skeptical, as Danah doesn’t cite any real numbers in the paper as it is right now. I would love to see some hard statistics.
Some more coverage: Deep Jive Interests , BigShinyThing , Guardian Unlimited , Ars Technica , Susan Mernit , Virtual Economics , CenterNetworks , Boing Boing , Ypulse