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Facebook Vs. MySpace: What's Class Got To Do With It?

MONDAY AUGUST 13 2007 4:00 AM

Submitted by seanbonner. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: myspace, facebook, friendster, class

(Photograph by Mack Reed)

At least twice a month someone asks me for a link to my page on MySpace -- I usually end up pointing them to a blog post I made about this time last year called, "MySpace can eat a bag of dick." The short version is that I got so frustrated with every single aspect of how MySpace works that I deleted my account, walked away, and never looked back. The interesting change is that at that point people were asking me for the link several times a week and it's been steadily decreasing since then. For the most part I'm not very vocal about my distaste for MySpace so I don't think that's why requests have slowed, instead I'm getting the same questions but now asking about my page on Facebook.

I'd been noticing more and more of my social circle moving over to Facebook but had just assumed it was the same kind of migration we'd seen a few years ago when people started moving off of Friendster and over to MySpace. This was just my assumption and I had little to back it up, so when danah boyd started talking about the same topic I was very interested. Turns out it's anything but the same kind of migration, and in fact is more of a division. A few months ago danah wrote a piece called, "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" where she noted that only certain kinds of people were leaving MySpace for Facebook but for some circles MySpace was still the premier SNS. After a bit of explanation about how "class" in America has less to do with how much money you make and more with who you surround yourself with, she points out where this split is happening:

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.

A very important note to make here is that danah's research focuses on high school kids only, as that's who she was speaking with directly before she came to these conclusions. It was interesting to see that among Facebook users, all of them knew about MySpace (and often had negative things to say about it), but frequently MySpace users hadn't ever heard of Facebook. As you might expect people misread her article, pulled bits out of context and jumped to conclusions prompting her to write a response a month later addressing many of the issues people brought up. The age issues was a big one, as was the use of race in her observations. In her follow up she clarified a bit more where all this info came from, stating:

When I talk about data, I'm not talking about my friends or what I hear from teenagers in Los Angeles (or San Francisco). I drive to disconnected communities and talk to teenagers from different schools about their lives. I hang out in public places where I watch teens. I hang out on MySpace and scan the micro-profiles that one can see on Facebook. I talk to parents, teachers, pastors, and community leaders from all over the nation. I talk to people from varied backgrounds, all to get at what's going on. The trick to ethnographic work like this is to understand the biases that are operating in the spheres you study. This is not survey work. This is about contextualizing what you learn, making sense of how an individual is or is not like her/his peers. This is not about random sampling, but sampling until you start to see patterns that are predictable, until you flesh out the domain. While individual experiences are important, when I'm drawing patterns, I'm talking beyond the individual - I'm trying to paint a meta portrait.

One point from her original piece that really struck me was how this division was reflecting in the military. She found that the educated Officers were all on Facebook, while the rank and file troops were hanging out on MySpace. MySpace was recently banned while Facebook remains accessible - perhaps because of who each site is reaching. danah writes:

MySpace is the primary way that young soldiers communicate with their peers. When I first started tracking soldiers' MySpace profiles, I had to take a long deep breath. Many of them were extremely pro-war, pro-guns, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-killing, and xenophobic as hell. Over the last year, I've watched more and more profiles emerge from soldiers who aren't quite sure what they are doing in Iraq. I don't have the data to confirm whether or not a significant shift has occurred but it was one of those observations that just made me think. And then the ban happened. I can't help but wonder if part of the goal is to cut off communication between current soldiers and the group that the military hopes to recruit.

Bringing this back to my own observations, my peers use their SNS for more than just staying in touch with a select circle of friends. Lots of business is done through these sites and connecting with the right network of people can make all the difference when launching or hyping a new project. As key figures in these networks jump from one ship to the other there are huge circles of people following their lead, in the same way popular kids in high school circles determine (often without knowing it) which sites their peers will be using simply by which they choose to stay on themselves. I personally shifted to Facebook simply because it worked, where MySpace never seemed to.

68 Comments

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Stuntcock

Philadelphia, PA

May 2007

AUG 13, 2007 04:29 AM

i see mostly younger people shifting to facebook over myspace. im 31, i hardly ever see or hear of people my age shifting. its the next generation, those in the teens to early 20s range.

i met someone 21 recently who talked about facebook so i finally went to check it out. i decided to see who from my school was on it since it seems to be quite the thing in schools these days. sure enough, starting with my graduating class and moving forward in years, the evidence showed true. In my year, only 4 or so users, none of which i even recall, but appear to have been goody two shoes. then with each year forward, a few more, then a few more, then one year in particular, it seems to explode. must have been the year facebook began perhaps, and ive just been out of the loop...

facebook also seems to allow more privacy, so i see girls shifting over to it to dodge creeps and stalker/lurker types easier. i dont seem to have any problems with those types, and im just too fucking lazy to be honest, so myspace it stays.

interesting article.

Lode_Runner

Australia

December 2004

AUG 13, 2007 04:34 AM

..."alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, ... 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.

I don't know about America, but in Australia half the 'alternative kids', 'artists', 'punks, emos and goths' that I know are from 'middle class' (ie upper working class) background and a lot of them do go to University. Most certainly wouldn't go into the military at the end of school.

It seems like she's just trying to dichotomise everyone into "University" going jocks and cheerleaders, and working class 'reject' 'outsiders' , to prove her point about class differences between My Space and Facebook.

I think if she explained the division as being between those who uphold the values of middle class America, versus those who reject those values or are outside of those values to begin with, it might be a bit more accurate.

I hang out in public places where I watch teens.

Ethnographer or not, that sounded a little creepy.

reprobate

New Orleans, LA

December 2002

AUG 13, 2007 04:50 AM

Is it really ethnographic research if the subject didn't exist five years ago and will be irrelevant in ten, or is it just self absorbed and self promotional crap that only marketers will remotely give as shit about?

This is about as important as the fucking hula hoop, but baby, you're the ginchiest.

NickFaust

USA

April 2004

AUG 13, 2007 04:53 AM

Lode_Runner said:

I hang out in public places where I watch teens.

Ethnographer or not, that sounded a little creepy.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

Almost all dichotomies are false.

Facebook (I have no account) and MySpace (have an account, but it just generates spam - and I have a graduate degree by the way.) are competitors positioning themselves for market share. Once one of them outdoes the other, it will start looking like that which it sought to destroy.

In short, when Facebook is all that is left, it will start looking like MySpace and some upstart competitor will be siphoning off all the early adopters.

Lode_Runner

Australia

December 2004

AUG 13, 2007 05:10 AM

NickFaust said:

Almost all dichotomies are false.

I couldn't agree more, but then I am partial to the ideas of Levi-Strauss and Derrida.

reprobate said:
Is it really ethnographic research if the subject didn't exist five years ago and will be irrelevant in ten, or is it just self absorbed and self promotional crap that only marketers will remotely give as shit about?

Ethnography implies that it's based on fieldwork - lots of participant observation - and that it results in a lot of indepth descriptive writing about a social/cultural phenomena... so in that sense it is methodolgoically virtually ethnographic, even though in terms of ethnography as a tradition of writing it may be a very poor example. But yeah, I agree with your point that in ten years time when the My Space vs Facebook market war is over, it isn't really going to last as significant Sociological research, and that it is of more interest to marketers looking to define the demographics of consumers, then it is to Sociologists pondering Cultural Capital.

DeadFlagBlues

Boone, IA

May 2006

AUG 13, 2007 05:22 AM

Meh. For what it's worth, I think Facebook's far and away the superior service for a lot of reasons, and so do my "ne'er do-well" friends -- goths, punks, "art fags." There's no real class division except, on either service, the ones who are actually using it -- sending messages, making and joining groups, having actual discussions, etc. -- tend to be the outsiders. Most people just let it sit, making the occasional "haha lol" post somewhere.

I think this is precisely the kind of subject where it's easy to find evidence to support whatever conclusion you want to draw. I could argue both sides of this one all day.

Also, I actually get a lot done with my Facebook.

kommsuessertod

Davenport, IA

April 2007

AUG 13, 2007 05:38 AM

For me, it seems that the big difference between the two is the level of angst present. Facebook seems to posses a certain level of maturity, offers things to people who are out of high school, where as myspace caters more to the high school mindset. Case and point, if you look at myspace bulletins, especially the "answer and repost" surveys seem to have a lot of questions that seem almost silly to ask anyone out of high school, such as "Have you ever left your house without telling your parents?" That was taken directly from a survey from a myspace bulletin, and I would share others about such delicate subjects as "making out" and "driving" but I wont take precious space on these here internets.

Facebook just seems to be less, well, silly. While it does have its moments with its varied applications, something about it just seems less childish. Not all that much, but enough to make a difference.

angrboda

South Africa

November 2005

AUG 13, 2007 05:42 AM

Interesting article...

PS. I am a firm Facebook fan, having made the move across from MySpace a couple of months ago.

bendingunit23

Victoria, BC

April 2005

AUG 13, 2007 05:55 AM

I'm sticking with myspace because that's where SG's wallace, stormy and voltaire keep journals

wereduck

I'm lost

July 2007

AUG 13, 2007 06:01 AM

I loved reading the MSNBC article you linked to. The woman who wrote that said boyd spelled 'paradigm' incorrectly (or, she used '(sic)'), when, in fact, it was correct. She then went on to declare the original article to be full of typos and grammatical errors, despite the fact that there were none.

Got to love people who don't actually pay attention to what they read, and then go on to judge everyone else.

charlemagne

Battle Creek, MI

May 2005

AUG 13, 2007 06:13 AM

Dichotomies, even false ones, can be useful if they stir up the brain cells. In this spirit, it seems to me we have a conflict here between "good and evil." The snobs and rip-off artists move to Facebook while those who value democratic ideals and hard work stick with MySpace. I've attended many universities, got my degrees, and my shit still stinks. Go MySpace!

Kate

SUICIDEGIRL

United Kingdom

AUG 13, 2007 06:14 AM

i use both facebook and myspace.

i dont understand why people get so uptight about having to migrate or whatever....no one says you have to pick just one. i use myspace to promote my art, and facebook to stay in contact with people i actually know.

wereduck

I'm lost

July 2007

AUG 13, 2007 06:21 AM

charlemagne said:
Dichotomies, even false ones, can be useful if they stir up the brain cells. In this spirit, it seems to me we have a conflict here between "good and evil." The snobs and rip-off artists move to Facebook while those who value democratic ideals and hard work stick with MySpace. I've attended many universities, got my degrees, and my shit still stinks. Go MySpace!

Um, it's not exactly that clear cut. The original article by danah boyd made that explicitly clear.

And, while I have a MySpace, I just say 'meh' to both MS and Facebook. One's not 'more mature' than the other, or 'less silly', they are what they are. To think is to buy into a rather juvenile marketing machine (no offense to anyone intended).