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Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study.
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A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.
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The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.
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By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.
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The conclusions are based on interviews with many teenage users of the social networking sites by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.
In a preliminary draft of the research, Ms Boyd said defining "class" in the US was difficult because, unlike many other nations, it did not map directly to income.
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Broadly, Ms Boyd found Facebook users tend to be white and come from families who are keen for children to get the most out of school and go on to college.
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Characterising Facebook users she said: "They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities."
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By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tends to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.
Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".
"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers," she said.
Teenage users of both sites have very strong opinions about the social network they do not use, she noted.
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She wrote: "This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values."
Have you noticed this?
It's well known that Facebook is popular amongst 18-24 year olds, and MySpace amongst younger or more broader age ranges - this research I do believe cannot be definitive however, simply due to the fact the sites havent been in existance for the range of some target audience, so profiling is not even possible.
I do think to some extent this is true, however it can't be generalised - maybe MySpace with a much larger user base means the majority of the world simply are not "white, middle class, english speaking, and affluent... a very marxist generalisation, especially confirmed by the BBC" - maybe the technology and ground set up of each social network, facebook and myspace allows and encourages different types of behavior? For instance, Facebook insisting on a full name and confirmation (I wander whyFacebook's Draconian Rules: We Own You and Your Content), and MySpace allowing and prioritising the use of music and establishing your identity via a profile song... Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion, and who you define yourself with, and how - friends lists play a much more valuable role in MySpace than on Facebook - different ways of establishing an identity - especially with the large amount of skill, respectively to other social networks needed to customise a MySpace - and the fact that it can be done at all - unlike facebook. The research draws too many conclusion - it's like making generalisations on the population of the entire world based on six months of resarch from one city... some towns or schools have a high dominance of a particular social network, within their own, "real" social network - for instance school A, there may be few or no mySpace users, and many Bebo users, and in School B, there may be many MySpace users and few Bebo users... also self assigned stereotypes may group to specific services.. just theory for now - but many things to consider! Whats your view?
I think six (6) month study was not long enough to make accurate generalizations considering the number of fans each MySpace and Facebook has worldwide.
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Facebook's Draconian Rules: We Own You and Your Content