Two days ago, an interesting article caught my eye on BBC News. Reference is made to ethnographer Danah Boyd, PhD, who makes many observations in a non-scholarly blog essay regarding a social schism between Facebook and MySpace. Already, the blog post has received feedback from over 200 people. Essentially, Boyd argues that there is a strongly visible trend for the elite, educated, “hegemonic” teenagers to flock to Facebook while the socially ostracized teenagers swarm to MySpace.
Indeed many experienced social networkers, including myself, have commented on the apparent superiority of Facebook to MySpace. To many Facebookers, there seems to be this upper class prestige that comes with the Facebook network. This probably has to do with its history. Facebook was once restricted only to college students. Then the site gradually opened itself fully to the public, which perturbed a great deal of Facebook veterans who preferred the more intimate environment.
Still, […]
Original post by humanisticmystic