I found a fascinating article via Bokardo that talks about the drawing of class lines between Myspace and Facebook, and in some cases within the sites themselves.

The original article claims that the origins of each of the sites tends to help drive different audiences to them. Since [tag]Facebook[/tag] was originally started at Harvard and was geared toward college students, upwardly mobile teens flocked to it while those with less ambition found their friends more readily on [tag]Myspace[/tag]:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities. MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

The article also debates the importance of aesthetics among the different types of network users:

The look and feel of MySpace resonates far better with subaltern communities than it does with the upwardly mobile hegemonic teens. This is even clear in the blogosphere where people talk about how gauche MySpace is while commending Facebook on its aesthetics. I’m sure that a visual analyst would be able to explain how classed aesthetics are, but aesthetics are more than simply the “eye of the beholder” - they are culturally narrated and replicated. That “clean” or “modern” look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I’m drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace resembles the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year… I should note here that aesthetics do divide MySpace users. The look and feel that is acceptable amongst average Latino users is quite different from what you see the subculturally-identified outcasts using. Amongst the emo teens, there’s a push for simple black/white/grey backgrounds and simplistic layouts. While I’m using the term “subaltern teens” to lump together non-hegemonic teens, the lifestyle divisions amongst the subalterns are quite visible on MySpace through the aesthetic choices of the backgrounds. The aesthetics issue is also one of the forces that drives some longer-term users away from MySpace.

There’s also a really fascinating section of the article that ponders why the military has blocked Myspace usage but not Facebook. I’ll let you go read it for yourself.

This article has caused me to wonder what network I would have flocked to if I were a teen today. It’s tough… I wasn’t exactly popular enough to be a hegemonic teen, but yet I wasn’t far enough on the fringe to be a subaltern. Then again, my graduating class consisted of 38 people, so the social strata wasn’t really deep enough for sufficient analysis. I’d probably have been a Facebooker since I socialized mostly with college bound kids from nearby towns.

Even though I currently have a profile on both sites, I use Facebook almost exclusively, and the largest factors why are aesthetics and perceived social value. I feel that I am painting a better, prettier, sweeter smelling social picture for myself if I socialize on the cleaner, less cluttered Facebook. And, there’s some validity to the article’s observations. My Facebook profile is filled with friends that I actively keep in touch with or interact with in real life on a regular basis. My Myspace profile is half filled with people from my old high school that I rarely keep in contact with and never see because they didn’t have the momentum to make it out of my hometown. The other half is divided between people that are in my Facebook network and profiles that correspond to TV shows, actors, etc.

[tags]social media, sociology, popularity, social networking[/tags]