I have discouraged my children from getting Myspace accounts and have counselled great caution on Facebook for these reasons. Myspace in particular has long struck me as being extremely cavalier about all kinds of security (from viruses to stalking) and has the smell of a SNS designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of making money instead of doing a good job. The fact that it’s now owned by Rupert Murdoch is just the icing on the cake: it was always aiming at the tabloid market.

So my question is, why are the non-white people ending up in the dangerous part of town, even when no-one is paying rent? Or do different SNSs have “invisible rents”, which drive up the cost of LJ and other more geeky sites?

Just a thought,
-Steve

Urkot’s users are mostly from Brazil. Urkot (a Turkish word) is a SNS owned by Google. 40% of Friendster’s users are from the Philippines. Friendster is based in Sunnyvale. It’s simply how the userbase was seeded. User number 91 on Friendster is Filipina -a friend of Abrams, Friendster’s founder.

What about now? Is there a from of “white flight” in social networking sites? Are the more affluent white kids avoiding or leaving Myspace, now that minorites are joining? It’s possible, since were a lot more racist and prejudice than we’d like to admit.

However, one’s decision whether to join or leave a SNS is not the same as how we decide which part of the city or which suburbs to visit or stay away from. Are there too many black, white or asian people there? The exodus to Facebook from every other social networking sites ‘still’ has nothing to do with race or class. It’s all about faddism.

Too simple? Just a SNS owner’s point of view. Both Orkut and Friendster are useless to U.S. advertisers. So there’s a lesson to be learned from their mistakes.

A site I’d like to recommend. “WHAT IS SOCIAL DESIGN?”
http://bokardo.com/

Urkot’s users are mostly from Brazil. Urkot (a Turkish word) is a SNS owned by Google. 40% of Friendster’s users are from the Philippines. Friendster is based in Sunnyvale. It’s simply how the userbase was seeded. User number 91 on Friendster is Filipina -a friend of Abrams, Friendster’s founder.

What about now? Is there a from of “white flight” in social networking sites? Are the more affluent white kids avoiding or leaving Myspace, now that minorites are joining? It’s possible, since were a lot more racist and prejudice than we’d like to admit.

However, one’s decision whether to join or leave a SNS is not the same as how we decide which part of the city or which suburbs to visit or stay away from. Are there too many black, white or asian people there? The exodus to Facebook from every other social networking sites ‘still’ has nothing to do with race or class. It’s all about faddism.

Too simple? Just a SNS owner’s point of view. Both Orkut and Friendster are useless to U.S. advertisers. So there’s a lesson to be learned from their mistakes.

A site I’d like to recommend. “WHAT IS SOCIAL DESIGN?”
http://bokardo.com/

According to Hitwise, as of last week, the MySpace domain is one of the most visited domain amongst U.S. Internet users, accounting for 4.92% of all Internet visits. At its peak in June of this year, the site accounted for 7% of all Internet visits. Meanwhile, Facebook has been increasing steadily, currently taking the position as the ninth most popular domain in the U.S., accounting for 1% of all Internet visits. Even though both sites – being within the top 10 of all Internet domains – are somewhat ubiquitous, demographic and psychographic data on users indicates that there are some unique audience components to each service.

On a per capita basis, MySpace has 4% more women visiting its site than Facebook. Facebook users tend to be more affluent, with its users skewing towards households earning over $60,000 per year, while MySpace users skew toward lower income levels, with 12% more of its users earning under $60,000 per year. Using the psychographic system Mosaic to track U.S. Internet users, it’s clear that there’s a class distinction between users of the two social networks. Facebook’s most predominant group of visitors in Mosaic is “affluent suburbia,” a group that Mosaic describes as “the wealthiest households in the U.S., living in exclusive suburban neighborhoods enjoying the best that life has to offer.” The predominant group for MySpace, on the other hand, is “struggling societies,” or households that are primarily single parent, single income, raising families on lower incomes and tight budgets.

See more on
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1675244,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar

John, I appreciate your comment about this paper being limited to a specific college population. I certainly agree that one has to be careful about generalizing and I make no claims beyond this population in the paper. Note, however, that if anything, the issue you raise is going to suggest that findings here will be conservative. Moreover, note that while it seems like this is a college-educated group, if you read the paper you’ll see that I mention the relatively low graduation rate at this university. By their second year, almost a quarter of these students will have dropped out of college, and in six years fewer than half will graduate so it’s best not to think of all these students as future college graduates.