Last week, danah boyd generated significant discussion with her piece Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace (comments here). After reading it this morning (I was offline last week), and then exploring some of the controversy surrounding the piece, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.
In the essay, danah draws on her ongoing ethnography to explore class distinctions between Facebook and Myspace. Using frank language, she divides the representative “classes” of users – Facebook’s users are more systematically mainstream, whereas Myspace has become the catch-all for the second-class and minority cliques oft thought of as non-elite. As one might imagine, this argument created uproar, especially after it was grossly genericized in the press. While I think dichotomizing an audience as large as Facebook’s or Myspace’s is inherently problematic, danah’s essay was a meditation, meant to be thought-provoking and controversial.
danah’s work often draws the parallels between physical spaces and so-called “networked” or “digital” publics. As young people spend more of their lives interacting socially online, the expectations, norms and cultural baggage of our offline existences often show up in these online places. As a result, our online spaces become political and value-laden, and certainly the press and public-opinion treatment of Myspace is a prime exemplar.
How Myspace became a “scary” place is beyond the scope of this article; however, I’ve cataloged enough press clippings about social networks to clearly see an editorial slant. This is no surprise, as the “social networks as dangerous spaces” narrative has been a dominant theme for years now. But as we pull the layers back, I think danah brings up an interesting point for analysis – was Myspace easier to stigmatize because its userbase wasn’t the elite? Certainly, if we look at a Myspace/Facebook split in coverage, you’ll see differences in the volume and tone.
As we go down this path, one could argue that the systematic bias that pervades coverage of Myspace is a artifact of how the audience/userbase is generally covered; and if you buy danah’s characterization, this makes sense. I mean, when is the last time you read a positive mainstream press article about goths? And while I certainly don’t trust the press enough to throw away any of these possibilities, I think the larger effect we see in differences of coverage is due to access. That is, reporters/parents/schoolteachers have always had access to Myspace, whereas open access to Facebook is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Social networks as scary places is a media narrative that lasted longer than it should have. It played on parent’s worst fears (sexual exploitation) and turned teenage technical sophistication into a bad thing (i.e. savvy teens vs. clueless parents). I think the only reason the narrative is burning out is because the stories have been written so many times. Now, Facebook is emerging as an alternative – and it is being cast in the light of the “good alternative.” It is the anti-Myspace, which is a sentiment echoed up and down the food chain. Of course, in being the anti-Mypsace, we see a good/bad dichotomy between the two services. Those who use Facebook are good, advanced, self-respecting – while those who continue to populate Myspace – ouch.
As with anything boiled down into headline or paragraph, the nuance and complexity of the issue often overlooked. If Facebook is “good”, why doesn’t everyone just switch? And are those who don’t switch “bad” or second class? Of course not. I believe a good deal of this confusion can be explained by social network switching, or transition, costs.
If you’re reading my blog, it is likely you’ve heard of the network effect. In a nutshell, network effect means that as more people join a network, the network becomes more valuable. Imagine if you have 125 friends on Myspace, but you only know 10 people on Facebook; since you can get more social information from your 125 friends on Myspace, that network is much more valuable to you. Make no mistake, social network sites are social information hubs – the value of these hubs are directly related to the relevance of the network to the consumer. If you get more value out of your Myspace network, are you going to switch? Of course not – at least for now.
For the past three years, however, Facebook’s network has been growing amongst college and high-school students. Even though hundreds of thousands of people are joining Facebook each week, the strong ties and large networks in Facebook are generally populated by the students – they are the first-class network in Facebook, without a question. Because those who attend college can be grouped into secioeconomic classes, there’s certainly an effect for this self-selection. However, the reason one class can leave Myspace easier than the other is simply because switching costs are lower. If you’re of a “class” where many of your peers attend or have attended college, it is likely that you’ll have a rich network to join once you make the leap to Facebook. If you don’t, well – you’re a first adopter, and we know what that portion of the curve looks like. Does this mean that these “second-class” users can’t or won’t join – absolutely not – they will simply wait until Facebook’s network becomes valuable enough for them to join. In this sense, rational economic judgement (value of information networks) is keeping some users in situ, while others depart.
Of course, this analysis neglects a reality that some Facebook users do look down on Myspace (just as some Myspace users look down at Facebook). Are the Facebook users the kids with the new sneakers? Can we make this argument about digital publics? And perhaps having the social capital to be able to make the leap from Myspace to Facebook is a class statement. I think the problem here is that we’re overvaluing the tastemakers.
In 2004, students joined Facebook just because – not because it was the anti-Mypsace. Facebook grew from this point, and became the college social network. Yes – we consider this bloc to be the tastemakers (largely a function of their lifetime spending potential), but simply because they’re on Facebook – does that make it better? I think that’s the question we have to ask ourselves – because there are plenty of people who are perfectly happy on Myspace. Will the transition? Sure, I think transition is inevitable. Just as bars and restaurants go in and out of popularity, so will online social places. And just when those places become popular, the tastemakers will depart for new opportunities. But those who are left behind – do we need to worry about them? Honestly, I can’t really say – but my gut tells me they’ll fend for themselves just fine. There’s just too many parallels between this and everything else in life for me to believe that’s not the case.
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
