Myspace, Bebo, Facebook and LinkedIn. Where do you stand?
According to the research, the decision to join any social networking websites is based on the education and upbringing.
Danah Boyd, a researcher at the University of California and internet sociologist spent nine months interviewing the US teenagers who uses these social networking websites and her data shows a clear gap between the populations of each sites.
The data suggests Facebook members are more likely to be white, univeristy graduates and from the families who emphasize education and going to college, whereas Myspace is the domain of non-white working class folk,Latino, Hispanic and immigrants teens. Myspace is a cool thing for High school teens.
Boyd said,
The divide is very much clear in US Army, where the Soldiers of US Army are mainly on MySpace and Officers are on FaceBook
A month ago, the US Army banned MySpace but not Facebook which clearly shows the division in US Army.
Bebo has established itself as site for school kids, while LinkedIn is the choice of business community
| MYSPACE | BEBO | ||
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Teenagers uses it | Pre – Myspace teenagers uses it | Media/Business networking people uses it | Everyone uses it |
| Dominated by Non-white and working class people | Dominated by school kids | Dominated by Media/Business community | Dominated by white people |
| Anyone can see your profile | Its full of kids | very limited | very addictive and tempting |
How Myspace and Facebook started?
Myspace was founded in 2003 and became such a huge hit particularly among young music fans that Media moughal Rupert Murdoch paid £290 million for it in 2005. Myspace recently became the most visited site on the web.
Facebook started by Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and now has a 3.5 million members in the UK which includes the high profile Prince William. The dotcom pioneer Yahoo! is reputed to have offered $1.6bn for the company last year.
