By Claire Cain Miller, Forbes.com
A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving
MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming
the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.Not so, says
University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are
leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up
along class lines.Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country
already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing
MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in
September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.
That could have
big implications for advertisers targeting the coveted teenaged population
online, three-quarters of whom have a profile on a social network. Both
sites have been powerhouses for advertisers because of their huge,
wide-reaching
audiences, says Robin Neifield, chief executive of interactive
marketing agency
NetPlus Marketing. That strategy could change if the sites
become more like the
niche social networks popping up across the Web for
groups of like-minded people
from similar backgrounds.
Boyd's essay came
amid speculation about the future of the social network giants. Despite the fact
that MySpace still gets more than twice as many unique visitors as Facebook,
it's littered with postings announcing that users, often teens, are switching to
its rival.The number of Facebook visitors ages 12 to 17 jumped 149% over the
past year, while MySpace lost 27% of teens, according to ComScore Media Metrix.
Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp.owns MySpace, even lamented in an interview that
he was losing readers to Facebook. News Corp. is rumored to be considering
swapping MySpace for a 25% stake in Yahoo! Estimated ad revenue for 2007
calendar year for Facebook is $125 million, $525 million for MySpace, according
to research firm eMarketer.
Together, the two account for 72% of all online
advertising on social networks. There's a reason why the "goody-two-shoes,
jocks, athletes or other 'good' kids" are going to Facebook, says Boyd, who
studies social networks and youth culture and made her observations based on
formal interviews with 90 teens, informal interviews with hundreds more, and the
perusal of tens of thousands of teens' online profiles. Facebook launched in
2004 as a site for Harvard students. Gradually, it opened up to other college
students, then to high school kids if a college student invited them. "Facebook
is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers
desperately wanted in," Boyd writes. MySpace, meanwhile, is the "cool
working-class thing" for high school students getting a job after graduation
rather than heading to the Ivy League, Boyd writes. Constant local news stories
on predators targeting kids on MySpace further alienated the "good kids," she
says. Both companies declined to comment on Boyd's essay.
I can see that. It's interesting that their concern is how to make us consume MORE and MORE instead of why affluence is displayed the way it is. I, for one, didn't ever consider MySpace. It's cluttered, SPAMrific and POP-UP laden and messy. I don't know if I know anyone with
one. I got Facebook when my school was added (after some resistance!) as an easy alternative to online journaling. Just the facts :) Now it too is cluttered and becoming a creepy
stalker zone. Sad. And I don't click the ads, for the record!
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