I finally got a chance to read Danah Boyd’s very interesting essay called “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” the other day and have been thinking for a while about some of the points she raised. I have recently been very intrigued by the number of conversations, arguments and blog posts surrounding the comparison between the two social networking sites, particularly since Facebook received an enormous amount of new attention from the release of their developer’s platform. However, much of the discussion in this space seemed to revert to unsubstantiated predictions and meaningless bickering, rather than an actual well-thought-out analysis. Boyd has attempted to do this on some level in her essay by actually bringing to the forefront a topic of conversation that, whether you agree with her or not, encourages a more meaningful discussion. She has received a lot of buzz thanks to the article, and apparently a considerable amount of negative opinion as she here attempts to clarify the nature of the essay by specifying that it is not in fact a fully executed paper or finished research study. Regardless, I think the attention called to the subject is indicative of the importance of attempting to understand what patterns and trends, if any, we can view within social networking platforms and if in fact the analyzation of these platforms can provide us with a more complete understanding of social norms that extend beyond the virtual.
Although I have by no means had the opportunity to research as extensively as Boyd into the various ideas that she is presenting, I do have my own thoughts after reading the essay. For those of you who care to read on, here they are:
First, there are certain things that Boyd states within the paper that are self-evident. These points generally have to do with founding philosophy and the use of the site by early adopters. The way social software is architectured, marketed and initially used by the first people who come upon it generally paves the way for its continued success or failure, in some regard at least. MySpace has always been an inherently open platform that was designed for self-publicity. Many of the first adopters of MySpace were Friendster converts that had, most probably, become frustrated with Friendster’s lack of respect for members by discouraging the use of the site as they saw fit. Although it was later discovered by teens, the fact that it began as a place to do whatever you want and publicize yourself beyond the network of your established real-world connections remains true, as evidenced for instance by the stories of up and coming musicians who became successful simply by leveraging their MySpace profiles. In fact, and this has been stated elsewhere in a much less convoluted way, MySpace became much more than a social network. For many people, including lots of personal friends of mine, it became a place to construct one’s web presence and virtual identity for the first time and in a way that was so much easier than a blog or personal website through everything from slide shows to music to silly quotes and background images. The point, from the beginning, was to play with identity and be public, and as we all have observed, not necessarily to simply connect with your friends.
Facebook on the other hand, was an inherently closed platform designed specifically for college students, and elite college students at that. Thus, by its very design, it became a place to maintain existing social relationships, albeit some that were inherently weak ties, rather than form new ones. Even after the platform opened up last year to everyone, it seemed that many new users not necessarily connected with a university or high school, were slow to see the point. (I have to admit to being one of those people, as I have mentioned before). Short of the quite well-designed photo sharing application, Facebook appeared, from those I had spoken to back then, to be quite unnecessary. From my observation, many people who joined during that time period already had MySpace profiles and did not all of a sudden stop using their profiles as a result of joining Facebook. I saw this happen for two basic reasons; each site offered them the ability to connect with some friends and not others so there was a disadvantage to not participating in both or, after investigating Facebook, they found no utility in the site, few if any friends that they really wanted to connect with and a lack of ability to modify and amplify their identity as they had been accustomed to on MySpace. Many of these people kept their profiles to see what would happen in the future but were discouraged and did not feel the need to become active within yet another social network that appeared not to have any particular advantage over those they currently used. Those that I observed join Facebook that did not already have a MySpace profile fit into two categories, those who never really joined a social networking site before but were invited to Facebook by a recent convert and felt slightly more comfortable with the Facebook architecture because it was less public (these are still the people who only sign in to Facebook to accept friend requests and perhaps read a comment or respond to a message) and those who were recent college students who joined because other members of their school were on the site.
The point is, none of these differences in the way I saw MySpace and Facebook used prior to the developer’s platform had anything to do with the popular perception or definition of the sites themselves as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ necessarily. And the observations I had made back then were completely independent of any kind of class definitions. In other words, it seemed, and this is true across social networks, that people who were into social networking and would thus become active users of either site really wanted to be where their friends were. Regardless of one’s class definition, as Boyd characterizes it, if your friends were not on Facebook, there was no incentive for you to participate, no matter your level of schooling, socio-economic status etc. And given that Facebook was such a closed garden for a long time and had a considerably smaller user base, the likelihood that many former college grads or others would know about the site was slim. The question then becomes more amount current schooling status rather than class, meaning it was all about whether you were “in school” or “not” at that moment and how important Facebook was to your specific social circle.
My point in making these generalizations about what I observed occur is not necessarily to disagree with Boyd’s finding that more college and college-bound students are on Facebook then any other group because I believe that is (or maybe at this point WAS) most certainly true. The point is that I believe this to be a result of founding principles of both sites, rather than because of an actual interpretations that MySpace is ‘bad’ or Facebook is ‘good’ and that these definitions are not necessarily being utilized extensively in the real world to determine which site to belong to. I also believe that the developer’s platform and the new applications that have resulted have added an incentive to join Facebook for people who are not current or future college students, which has the potential to change the demographic of the site considerably and possibly even the way it is used. As an example, I have been friend requested at least ten times more over the last month then I ever have before on Facebook and many of these people are people I don’t know, which never happened to me before on the site, even though it happens on MySpace on a daily basis. Also, many of my friends who never went to college and who fall into a couple of the categories that Boyd discussed as not being the ‘norm’ on Facebook, have recently joined because they are simply bored with MySpace. And quite a few of them have actively contacted their other MySpace friends in the hopes that they will join Facebook as well. I am not saying that Facebook will become MySpace, or that one will take over the other, or even that the same people who like and find MySpace useful, for whatever reason, will also find Facebook useful. All I am saying is that by opening up Facebook via the applications something HAS changed and in a big way. The long-term success and resulting effect of this change are obviously unknown, but I think it presents a significant problem when trying to classify the particular demographic of each site at this point in time. And I would have liked to have heard Boyd’s opinion as to what kinds of social changes she can see happening considering the huge change in Facebook’s structure. The fact that this was never mentioned seems rather odd to me because I really do believe it changes the conversation.
As a result of these thoughts, my initial conclusion is that while the cultures of each site may still be different (and remain different forever) and the founding principles may have initially made each site relevant to a different group of people, I am not convinced at all that this translates into a real look into divisions in class or as the result of the members of either site viewing one in a better light then the other. It may be simply put that Facebook is now the new thing, and with any new social software the most prevalent user-group will be those who it was initially marketed to and those that are the type to naturally be particularly web-savvy and technologically inclined. If the platform succeeds (which it appears to have thus far) and Facebook continues to find new and interesting ways to be relevant and exciting, I predict that more people will join across whatever definitions of class one might have (I am still unsure as to how to define class divisions in American society honestly) and the overwhelming popularity among current and former college students will be surpassed by an overwhelming number of people period, just as the initial population of MySpace was greatly surpassed by everyone and their mom (literally in some cases).
I also think one reason that Boyd’s article has received the negative commentary that it has is because no one wants to be put in a box. As I believe Boyd has stated herself in previous articles on the subject, within every social platform, natural groups of connected people emerge. These groups develop their own way of utilizing a particular site. For instance, if most of your MySpace friends don’t decorate their profile extensively, you probably won’t either. If most people you are connected to on Flickr don’t send you Flickr messages to communicate, you probably wouldn’t send them one. And if most of your Facebook friends don’t use a particular application you have added, you will probably delete it eventually. Even though among other groups on the same site one of these things may be extremely relevant. What I am trying to get it is that to make a generalization about the types of people that use something and the way in which they use it, especially when you are talking about a site as large as MySpace, is sometimes very difficult. It’s not that patterns don’t emerge or that certain things don’t eventually become evident, but to state that MySpace is 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” while Facebook is for “the preps” and “the good kids” can get sketchy just because of the language. No one wants to be told that they are most likely “this” if they use a particular site. There is also so much gray area in this subject. How do you categorize a Latino with no higher education who lives in an affluent suburb and mostly associates with white twenty-somethings from wealthy families? How do you categorize a white recent high school grad from a wealthy family that didn’t go to college and associates mostly with those from a poorer economic bracket? It’s not easy.
My secret prediction in any case is that something is going to bring MySpace down regardless. I don’t know if it will be Facebook or something else entirely. But the next big thing is always surely replaced by the bigger thing that comes after it. And the bottom line is….many people are getting bored.
