Interesting story on NPR this morning about the social anthroplogy behind the Facebook /MySpace divide.
Short and anecdotal, its main point was that Facebook attracts young/white/self-styled sophisticates, while MySpace is home to Hispanics and creative types (artists and musicians) — or in the vaguely racist/classist words of one Facebook user, only “trashy” people use MySpace.
The most interesting observation in the piece was offered by social media researcher danah boyd:
“Young people — and for the most part adults as well — don’t really interact online with strangers,” she says. “They talk to people they already know. You have environments in which people are divided by race, divided by class, divided by lifestyle. When they go online they are going to interact in the same way.”
By interesting I mean it fits into that Ig Nobel Prize territory — serious, persuasive research that confirms what common sense tells us — people naturally divide into cliques, and parties/clubs get old. The same kid who dismissed MySpace as the trash heap of social networking made this zeitgeisty prediction:
“Teenagers … always like to go from one thing to another,” says Nico Kurt, 16. “Facebook is that thing [now], but I think it is going downhill … There is going to be a new cool thing sooner or later.”
Oh, and Twitter is for old people.
