Via Bora, a very interesting essay by Danah Boyd about class divisions in social networking sites:
Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.
You should also take a look at the blog post, which features a lot of really interesting comments. I particularly liked the suggestion that "you could probably find a simillar division within blog software: MySpace: LiveJournal/Xanga/Blogspot vs. Facebook: Drupal/Wordpress/MoveableType."
I don't really have enough experience with either of these sites to make a detailed judgement-- I do have a Facebook account, but I don't use it for much-- but the central argument at least sounds plausible. At the same time, there are some things about it that push some of my buttons, and not in a good way.
I'll have to think about it a bit more, in my copious free time. But it was an interesting read.
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Unfortunately, I can't read the essay right now - site blocked by nannyware. However, I have my doubts about anything that compares to LiveJournal - the big draw on LJ as far as I can tell is the consolidation feature of the Friends page, and as near as I can tell none of the other journaling sites are duplicating that. People on LJ are - at some level - not there to write, they're there to read!
To be clear, the comparison to LiveJournal is a suggestion by a commenter, not a part of the original essay. The original essay is just about Facebook and MySpace.
Geez, those articles made me feel SO OLD! People talking about "growing up on MySpace"?!?
Facebook just recently (within the last year or so) started allowing members from non-college networks to join, whereas MySpace has been a free-for-all site where anyone at any age or with any affiliation could join. Maybe the shift has a little to do with Facebook's new policies.
I'm an old fart (26!), so can someone explain how MySpace is any different from GeoCities? Sure, the web authoring tools are far more sophisticated, but the barely readable results look the same to me. Flash and streaming audio have replaced and animated gifs. The impenetrable backgrounds and eye frying contrast are still here, however.
Personally, the main differences I see in the groups of people who use MySpace vs. Facebook, as far as my networks on both sites go, are mainly geographical. My friends back home in Canada all use Facebook, and my friends here in the US mainly use MySpace. In the same way, my Canadian friends use MSN for instant messaging, while my American friends use AIM.
Facebook started as a Harvard social website (hence the name, which is what the Harvard Directory is called). It has only gradually become more populist, first by opening to the other Ivies, then to select colleges, then to almost all colleges, then high schools, then the general populace. That goes to explain, most likely, any degree of class-ism that might be perceived about Facebook.