A class and cultural divide is separating the online populations of the social networking websites Facebook and MySpace.
The websites, which allow people to share photos, music and details about their lives, are increasingly attracting users of opposing social-economic backgrounds.
Such is the verdict of Danah Boyd, a researcher at the University of California, who found the typical audiences of Facebook and MySpace are, culturally at least, at odds with each other.
She told Freelance UK: “The fact that there's a noticeable split throughout the United States is curious and raises critical questions about a participatory divide and cultural divisions.
“The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other ‘good’ kids are now going to Facebook,” says her paper, Viewing American Class Divisions through Facebook and MySpace.
“These kids tend to come from families who emphasise education and going to college. They are primarily white, but not exclusively.”
Other traits of people on Facebook, which until last September was only open to students, include “having honours, looking forward to the prom” and living “in a world dictated by after school activities.”
MySpace, the paper distinguishes, is “still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, ‘burnouts,’ ‘alternative kids,’ and “other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm.”
And although each site dominates the headlines about social networking “teens on Facebook all know about MySpace, [but] not all MySpace users have heard of Facebook.”
Young people on Facebook “often have a negative opinion” about MySpace, seeing it as “ gaudy, immature, and “so middle school.”
They prefer the ‘clean’ look of Facebook, noting that it is more mature and that MySpace is ‘so lame,’ Ms Boyd found, after conducting interviews in seven US states.
Her paper, which she concedes may “piss many [people] off, says teens who are “into music or in a band” and the majority of those “who are socially ostracized at school” are on MySpace.
Asked whether Facebook has become more talked abut simply because of people leaving MySpace for something new, Ms Boyd said the demographic was more complex.
“There are plenty of people leaving Facebook as well,” she said. “For example, college students who are really cranky about all of the adults rushing on there obsessed that this is ‘the next cool thing’.”
But over the last six months, Facebook’s audience has grown at 19 times the rate of MySpace’s, while Bebo, another social networking website, has seen its audience double.
Releasing the figures, Alex Burmaster, an internet analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings said, “MySpace is, by far, still the most popular social network.
“However, if last month’s growth rates were to remain consistent, both Bebo and Facebook would catch MySpace in September this year.”
Tipped to pose a real threat to users of all three sites, regardless of their social-economic status, is the online community of identity fraudsters.
Last week Graham Cluley, technology consultant for Sophos, said users of social networking sites are leaving themselves “wide open” to crooks.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “There is an Oprah mentality to some of these sites - people let it all hang out, and update their information minute by minute.”
Jul 11, 2007
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