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Study: Social network sites breed class division
By Stevie Smith Jun 26, 2007, 14:00 GMT
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Older Talkback
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I think this article is forgetting the fact that for about 80% of the time facebook has been around it has only been available to college students. Only recently has it been available for the general public. This would force the majority of users to be college students, which would skew the results of the study. Perhaps in another year facebook and myspace may have a similar group of users, but right now the facebook community is comprised mainly of college students, if a study doesn't take that fact into account I believe its flawed.
i just read her article... she does take the fact that facebook was college based into account. it'll be interesting to look again in 5 years and see where they stand.
Not only has it been harnessed to college students only for such a long time, but even now it has networks in which only people in your particular network (i.e.- college, workplace, city) can see you. You have to adjust settings to make everyone see everything on your page. Whereas MySpace is either public or private, with no inbetween.
So it is much easier to breed class divisions when most of the people you can look at in Facebook are only from your region or work area. I think this is more of trying to compare apples with oranges than anything. MySpace is more comparable to Geoities webpages, or a Yahoo profile. Facebook is still kind of it's own breed of social network, so trying to point out differences in the culture of it compared to other social sites is misleading.
Word. This study is skewed. I know plenty of white upper middle class people who are on myspace. Facebook is for college. Why there is even a news report about this I can't fathom.
I agree with most of this study. Myspace is definity more socially integrated then facebook. Remember, a few months ago you needed your email address to end in .edu to register at facebook, meaning you had to be a college student or alumni. Let's take HBCUBootyCall DOT com (HBCUBootyCall DOT com) for instance. HBCU stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Talking of exclusion. Not only this site exclude anyone that is not black but also anyone that is not in college.
My 2 cents
Two questions:
A) Who cares in the first place? Is this somehow supposed to convince us we need a global 'social network' to integrate us all fully into some grand machine?
B) People who use myspace and people who use Facebook tend to use one rather than the other because that's where their friends are. So the article should probably be titled 'Friends and Social Spheres breed class divisions' because that's how these things work.
And as a totally separate issue, the two networks usually serve very different purposes. Myspace is more like a blog; Facebook enables quick notes between friends and short status updates.
Thanks everyone for pointing that out about Facebook only recently opening up to non-college people. This is a great example of how the media never checks anything before they make a huge deal out of it.
This whole article is BS, FaceBook was only opened to collge for a long time...which means DUH, most people on there would have gone to collge.and getting a higher level of education...
the guy/girl who did this research should get an F.
true story.
Yeah these findings are somewhat flawed. I use both but currently I use Myspace the most because thats what caught on first and thats where a majority of my friends are. Not only that but I can customize my page a lot easier then Facebook. Now don't get me wrong Facebook is great and I prefer the simple look if I'm not allowed to customize anything but seeing how I'm somewhat a web developer I like to put my own spin on things and facebook just doesn't allow me to do such things. I also agree that facebook use to be a college based site only so that can lead you to the easy assumption that people on facebook make more money because statistics show that people with a college degree make more money then those without. Another Social network site worth checking out is virb.com. Created by a few web developers like myself. You can find their blog over at thebignoob.com.
It was an interesting article and makes you think, however... even though the statistics are true. Can studies that are subjective as this ever be truly quantified? There are so many factors that affect something like this, it would be hard to narrow down every possibility.
This so-called 'study' is rediciulous. Being a member of both MySpace and Facebook, the only difference that there is between the two sites is age and customization (which facebook has been adresing for the past 05.-1 year). Currently, MySpace allows ANY user who has a valid email address to set-up an account. Facebook, which was once restricted solely to those that attended a college or university, then allowed users in high school to join, then finally opening it up to anyone with a valid email address. Now, I understand some might say that MySpace has more users and many of them are 'subservient' teens; however, give facebook enough time to spread (as it has already been doing at an amazing rate) and you will see the same exact thing on facebook. Secondly, if any of you have ventured onto facebook in the past 3-6 months, you will have noticed that there are now customizable applications to add to your profile...things such as 'Top Friends' (sound familiar? well it should b/c it is directly from MySpace) and 'iLike' which allows you to place favorite music on your profile for other users to listen to (Again, similar to MySpace). All of these features are to provide users withthe same experience they get on MySpace. Facebook, which was ONCE an elitist 'club' so-to-speak, has now joined the ranks of MySpace as a just another Social Networking site. There is no more social class discrepancy between users, there is not a social gap between sites...I just wish Facebook would have stayed 'elitist' because it actually made you feel like you were a part of something...now, it just sucks
With regard to the study, it opens a vast understanding, as stated, to the very schemes these social networkings acclimate towards. For example, one may assume that someone that is unable to afford college is on myspace and this,just bending the very basis of collegic standards, would have a cascading effect on those friends related ralations to HIS understanding of the very social norm his community, however big, finds itself accliming towards.
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