Comments on: Facebook, MySpace: A race/class divide?

Danah Boyd, a Harvard fellow, suggests in a speech titled "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online" that the migration of teens from MySpace to Facebook is not unlike white flight.

[a_flores]

I am blank on these two giant social networks. I do not have both and I never visit both websites even once. My email inbox filled with many invitations or questions from my friends why I do not have any of social networks account. I do not see any benefit for me, yet. The second reasons is that my company is using webwasher software that I cannot visit any social networks, even if I am using proxy. The software recognizes any letters and once the software recognizes it web page will be just a total while blank page. Thanks.

[mrsdrwife]

Very interesting article. My husband asks me all the time, "why is everyone all the sudden not on myspace anymore and on facebook?" He's a little behind the times, technologically, but I've thought about the question many times.

MySpace is old school, cluttered, and crammed to the hilt with hook ups, IMVU ads, personals, and just general trashy material. Empowering people who do not know how to use CSS with the power to MODIFY CSS is generally a bad idea. Blinking backgrounds, "sparkling" images, tacky buttons, clashing colors, and half the time the links and/or text are the same color as the background! This is just bad. As a designer, I feel assaulted when I go to one of the general public's myspace pages. I maintain mine because I have some friends that refuse to switch. But, it does feel quite "ghetto" when compared to Facebook's clean, consistent feel.

[celiuz]

I personally don't really like facebook.Why? well you can't have privacy if every little thing you do is seen by everyone/friends.Like editting your profile,changing your display and etc.People can always have different point of views,but I love myspace more than any social networking sites.Myspace provides music to your profiles,editting pictures,layouts,and much more! Who cares about facebook and its games? I mean come on.I love music and myspace is where its at.If it wasn't for myspace,these new sites won't be as famous as they are today.what? what? yup,I said that.

[batemanjo9]

here is what I think: MySpace is for Kids, and Facebook is for people 18+ I dont like the idea of people changing their profile to where it does not even look like myspace, and they rearange things and hide things. Its like a bunch of clutter, or a big mess. Some people dont event remove the old html code and just paste in another layout code ontop of a old one. it really jacks things up. Now myspace blocks external links from your page, there are only a hand full of websites they let you link too, such as youtube, and photobucket. I have my own webhost and I cant link to it because myspace says I might harm their computer, it makes me look bad. Facebook on the other hand is BAD ASS! Its very organized and there is never any spam. You can link to external pages no matter what the source is. But this is what I think, other people may have a diff veiw.

[octocentric]

i get a kick out of stupid people like the majority of posters here...and i think its funny that a harvard "fellow" could be stupid enough to base her theory off of quotes from teenagers in high school...btw "ghetto" to the average high school kid can be slang for whatever isnt "in" or "cool" to their clique, and most certainly does not refer specifically to race. whats even funnier is the people on here who agree and feel the need to interject their meaningless opinions. (ie, i have niether service, and have nothing to contribute, but feel the need to put down both, and those who use them because it will make me feel better about my resistance to change, and give me an undeserved sense of superiority as i am "above" social networking).

I have both a myspace and a facebook, beginning with myspace in 2005, and making a facebook in 2006, both while in high school, since then i have become mostly a facebook user, and there is one major reason i switched, (for the record, most people i know on myspace, also have facebook as i am sure is the case for most people who are under 30 and not new the social network phenomenon) reason being that facebook offered live threaded messaging/comments, on most every post. simple.

The ability for everyone to add in to a conversation, essentially linking in the idea of a chatroom, without all users needing to have a specific chat client, is what makes facebook stand out.

having the ability to converse in real time about up to date topics, statuses, images, videos etc on the fly, instead of myspace's unintuitive SLOW process of navigating to ones page and finding their usually unlcickable or impossible to find "add comment" link (due to the bloat the majority of moronic html placement and advertisements people are too stupid to exclude from their pre-generated code) makes for a fun and usable experience that emulates interaction more effectively than myspaces engine.

add in the ability to IM via fb chat, and facebook eliminates the need for AIM, gchat, yahoo messenger etc. and gets rid of the stupid notion of "screen names" with facebook everyone you know is presented as their true identity and in a simple and easy to use fashion, with up to date notifications of your friends online/offline status, as oppose to myspaces "view online friends" page which is almost always unreliable, and regularly claims people are online when they arent.

bottom line facebook is just a more intuitive to stay in touch, and has stuck to its core function of staying connected with others, while myspace has focused heavily on band promotion and advertising, when was the last time you saw facebook promoting some mindless reality "vote for your favorite" type show? when was the last time you got phished on facebook and all your friends got comments u didnt send? or got 30 freind requests from a bunch of crappy never-going-to-make-it wanna be rappers? exactly. myspace killed itself with its growth, essentially just making it a popularity contest and an outlet for people to project an idealistic image of themselves as who they wish they truly could be. When people realize this,they begin making the switch to FB. When myspace realized this, they did the only thing they could do, and that was copy facebook in almost every way shape and form (status updates, threaded comments, status comments, applications, live IM, etc) but like i saw in a comment earlier, it was a case of too little too late, and while myspace has made some much needed improvements, there is just no going back at this point, facebook will continue to outshine it until the next service comes along.

P.S.

for those who claim facebook is "too public", learn to use the security settings. voila. not public anymore.

for those who think facebook is all "mindless chatter", hide the people you dont want to be updated about from your timeline, and only keep those you do, voila. no more meaningless chatter.

for those who think facebook is bloated by too many apps, heres an idea, try not adding the apps to your profile when it clearly asks you before installing, "would you like to add this application to your page and allow it to access your information". voila. no more intrusive apps.

quite simple really.

OCTO

[Alegria_Alegria]

Dirty Game's Title :
"Cyber War of Supremacy"

Bottom Line : > Competition !

There is(are) some "Higher Authority" behind all this, playing "The Controller" ! , lighting up the match of strife, and throwing it right between those 2 ( MySpace & Facebook ), and watching the circus catch up on fire !!!.....(both maybe losing scared users !), and clapping happily !.....taking "in", those very same "scared users" : welcome to "my" home (page) > (own site), I'm "safe". I'm the only best !.....

Next : ----------> "Twittwar".

PS. I use both ( MySpace & Facebook ), and will. - ( Twitter also ).
And I use "The Controller" 's too.

[Alegria_Alegria]

Dirty Game's Title :

"Cyber War of Supremacy".

Bottom Line : --------> Competition.

There is (are) some "High Authority" behind all this, playing "The Controller", lighting up the match of s trife, and throwing it right between those 2 ( MySpace & Facebook ), and watching the circus catch up on fire !!!.....( both maybe losing scared users !), and clapping happily !.....taking "in", those very same "scared users" : welcome to "my" home (page) > (own site), I'm "safe". I'm the only best !.....

Next : ----------> "Twittwar".

PS. I use both ( MySpace & Facebook), and will. ( I'm a Twitter user also).
And I use "The Controller" 's too.

[yamato76]

Boyd's own bias arguing that a group is wrong for avoiding something they feel is obnoxious, intensely aggressive and takes pride in ignorance is troubling. Other societies that hold education and mutual respect are held in high regard. Yet, this person criticizes this aspect of the students who hold the same values.

[yamato76]

I joined FB only because it allowed me to get in contact with people I had lost touch with. Subsequently, it has a messenger so I do not have to add these people to a messenger program. It suggest people I may know and shows me people whom I may know.
Bands are able to add music, now, making myspace irrelevant.
The pages load quickly because there are few graphics relative to myspace.