UPDATED: Facebook is the Hamptons/Officer Country, MySpace is Los Angeles/Barracks

The BBC today reports on a demographic survey of Facebook and MySpace users conducted by UC Berkeley. Facebook gets snooty sounding college kids coming from well-heeled families; MySpace gets ethnic-Americans, freaks & iconoclasts, and people from less educated and wealthy backgrounds.

From the article:

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.

This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values
Danah Boyd 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.”

By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tendeds 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”. [from: the BBC]

Well then - Facebook is the squeaky clean quarteback/cheerleader all-American socialnet, and MySpace is the grunge band, hip-hop, lowrider underground.

Implications?

Facebook gets the money. Members with money, heading into moneyed professions, Facebooking the whole way.

MySpace gets the volume. As a catch-all for everyone else, MySpace will continue to lead in membership and usage volume.

Read juicer quotes on Boing Boing, btw.

UPDATE

From the Guardian:

In the paper she also conjectured that a recent decision by the US military to ban service personnel from using sites including MySpace showed evidence of social fissures in the forces.

“A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because there’s a division, even in the military. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook.” [from: the Guardian]

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 and is filed under News and Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.