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

commentary
MONDAY AUGUST 13 2007 4:00 AM

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

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.

PAGE:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Comments

strongarmfarmer

Evansville, IN

June 2005

AUG 13, 2007 06:53 PM

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?

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

OK Kookie, are you gonna lend me that damn comb or not???
Sorry, couldn't resist. Last place I ever expected to here that referenced.

Necia

San Francisco, CA

August 2005

AUG 13, 2007 07:16 PM

anaesthetics said:
Considering Facebook was exclusively University based at the beginning and spread on an educational basis for the first 2 years its hardly surprising.

THANK YOU.

I can't for the life of me imagine why this "division" is surprising to anyone. Yes, you can get onto Facebook without an educational-institution-granted email address now (as of not very long ago, actually). No, you can't do much with it without one (or without an employer-related email address, I guess). It's still mostly 1) college kids, 2) college grads, and 3) college-bound high school kids who heard about it through their college friends (or 3)a. high school kids at high schools that actually provide students with a high-school-based email address--that tends to happen at richer schools).

This is not surprising. Not in the slightest. The fact that this chick thinks she's making a novel observation is kind of shocking to me.

adjunct

Philadelphia, PA

July 2002

AUG 13, 2007 07:22 PM

The next person who uses the language of postcolonial studies to talk about self-disorganizing internet communities gets a thumb in the fucking eye. Talk about two areas of study with completely divergent ideas of what's at stake, ferchrissake.

OTOH, danah is one of a few people who'd be bothered to write something like this.

Ciroc

Santa Barbara, CA

December 2003

AUG 13, 2007 07:36 PM

Facebook started as a college site, therefore, a lot of the users on it will be college students/graduates. Facebook has only recently become open to everyone (much to my chagrin). I use them both, but not for the same things. Facebook is more for my college friends and MySpace for bands/celebrities/looking at pictures of skanks.

wereduck

I'm lost

July 2007

AUG 13, 2007 07:37 PM

Necia said:

anaesthetics said:
Considering Facebook was exclusively University based at the beginning and spread on an educational basis for the first 2 years its hardly surprising.

Actually, several times in both the original article and her response to the responses she was getting, she pointed out that these were not new observations.

Most of the article was going into not only the 'division' between users on one or the other, but also the perceptions that are associated with them (as in, MySpace being for 'the bad people'), and how those perceptions relate to the class divide.

wtfcupcakes

Lake Placid, NY

July 2007

AUG 13, 2007 08:57 PM

SonOfAPunk said:
Facebook is MySpace, but useful.

it has all of those annoying applications now, though. i hate reading all of this shit in the feed thingy about things i really don't care about.

i'm on both myspace & facebook and they both have good/bad points.

Lovefuck

I'm lost

November 2004

AUG 13, 2007 09:56 PM

heh

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/hstrips/0/1/8/1/01812.png