Somehow I missed danah boyd’s paper “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” until today.
I think it’s pretty much a must-read for anyone working in this space:
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.
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I’m not sure if it’s just my own circle of friends, but Facebook seems to have exploded here in the last month or so. As a recently indoctrinated Facebook afficianado (and long-time Myspace hater) it really is very interesting to hear Dana’s reasoning behind the oh-so-apparent split between the two social networks in the US. If we see a similar split here in Australia, I wonder if we’ll see a similar pattern, even though we won’t have the same course of events influencing us?
Personally, I avoided Myspace and embraced Facebook for two reasons: 1. You can’t skin it (leave design to the designers please!), and 2. extremely granular privacy options (in the past Myspace has been heavily criticised for it’s lack of privacy options).
I think in Australia the “music lovers are on MySpace” thing is a large influence, too, though.
Sheds an interesting light on the type of people I bump into in MySpace vs FaceBook.
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