Myspace versus Facebook: Class War

A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.

Not so, says University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up along class lines.

Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.

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Facebook launched in 2004 as a site for Harvard students. Gradually, it opened up to other college students, then to high school kids if a college student invited them. "Facebook is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers desperately wanted in," Boyd writes.

MySpace, meanwhile, is the "cool working-class thing" for high school students getting a job after graduation rather than heading to the Ivy League, Boyd writes. Constant local news stories on predators targeting kids on MySpace further alienated the "good kids," she says. Both companies declined to comment on Boyd's essay.

From: www.msn.com (who else?)

My space is the cool, working class online social community. Not much to comment on this, just though it was interesting. Workers of the web unite! Visit my myspace page for more virtual propaganda.