Posted on 07/23/2007 11:46:59 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
Social Networking
Class War: MySpace Vs. Facebook
Claire Cain Miller 07.23.07, 6:00 AM ET
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.
Her analysis could help marketers figure out which sites to target--help she says they desperately need. "Many of the advertisers that I have met are extremely savvy about offline marketing but complete fools when it comes to online marketing," ignorant of who visits Web sites and why, Boyd wrote in an e-mail interview with Forbes. Paying attention to demographics could help. Hot Topic should target MySpace, for example, while J. Crew should focus on Facebook.
"As an advertiser, in my opinion, Facebook users are more qualified to convert and more apt to buy a shirt, so I would go there before MySpace," says Josh Mohrer, director of retail for BustedTees, an online purveyor of hipster clothes and sometime Facebook advertiser.
Facebook can lure advertisers with its affluence, says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an online marketing analysis firm. His data backs up Boyd's conclusions that Facebook users are richer than those on MySpace. Still, MySpace attracts so many more viewers that "there's no way marketers are going to leave," he says.
NetPlus chief Neifield says she's not paying too much attention to Boyd's observations. Advertisers should look beyond demographics when placing ads and instead analyze online behavior like who visited other sites with similar content, who downloaded what or who clicked on which ads, she says. "It's not very often these days that we buy based on demographics alone."
Who could have figured?
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.
Poor kids still write on walls with spray paint, so what?!?!?!
Facebook at least has order and privacy settings, whereas Myspace is...like a border town without a Sheriff.
bttt
Teens were not the original customers of Myspace. It was an 18+ site until “Tom” got ready to sell it (first soliciting Viacom before finally selling to NewsCorp).
Today Myspace is overrun with advertising (and promotional accounts of every stripe whether it be a store, a band, a company...).
It’s like trying to draw some social distinction between a hotmail account and a gmail account. There is none.
Come on. Gmail is much more upscale than Hotmail.
MySpace is utter chaos. Facebook is user-defined chaos.
And both sites are absolutely worthless.
How long before the Supreme Court requires busing of accounts from Facebook to My Space?
I have discussed this topic of My Space vs Facebook with my 20 year old son who is heavily involved in Music(i.e. plays in several bands and has recorded in Nashville.) He says that My Space is primarily for musicians and people who follow bands, etc to network, display their music and share info about their Bands and concert dates etc.
A lot of bands do use it for that. However, I much prefer purevolume.com for bands. Less chaos, more user-friendly, and more professional looking.
Not necessarily I use Facebook to keep up with friends from College after I graduated in 2006/..
LOL.
Disagree. I use facebook to stay in touch with folks whom I have not seen since middle and elementary school!
Um, aren’t they both free (shows how much I know)?
How does Facebook keep out the “riff raff”?
Like DU vs. WA?
Right, because there is no in between.
Myspace has privacy settings.
“Facebook at least has order and privacy settings, whereas Myspace is...like a border town without a Sheriff.”
You say that like it is a bad thing.
Gmail is pretty good about spam - better than a paid Verizon account, for example. You just have to assume that Google will violate your privacy.
I don't know much about either, but a friend invited me to sign up on facebook and I did. First thing I noticed is it lists every small detail you do in your public profile page. I edited my hometown and it reports that in my profile.
Now I come across this today.
Within the last 10 days, more than 50,000 Facebook members have signed a petition objecting to the new program, which sends messages to users’ friends about what they are buying on Web sites like Travelocity.com, TheKnot.com and Fandango. The members want to be able to opt out of the program completely with one click, but Facebook won’t let them.
I haven't used the account I opened since the day I opened it, but as far as facebook...so much for privacy.
As a user, I can fine-grain my news feed settings but the new Beacon technology is unsettling. 'Tis a pity that Mark Zuckerberg continues to alienate the core constituency of facebook: college students.
Weegee: pot, kettle, my friend!!!!
One thing I like about Myspace is that I can just add any band I like as a friend and get a notice when they go on tour, when they have a new record out, etc.
And also, to find out what the hipsters are doing every night in Houston!
:-)
hey, I just realized you posted this back in July.
heh!
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