White flight from myspace to Facebook? (divisions by economic class, race, gender appearing)

[lindisfarne]

How could that be? Sure, Facebook is growing much faster. But MySpace is far from dead. In May, Web-traffic tracker comScore reported that Facebook and MySpace are neck and neck in terms of U.S. visitors, with 70.28 million that month for Facebook, up 97% from a year ago, and 70.26 million for MySpace, down 5% from last year.

Ms. boyd got some answers from group of people she’s been hanging out with over the last four years: U.S. teens. During the 2006-2007 school year, her conversations with high-school students began showing a trend of white, upper-class and college-bound teens migrating to Facebook–much like the crowd in the conference hall has. Meanwhile, less-educated and non-white teens were on MySpace. Ms. boyd noted that old-style class arrogance was also in view; the Facebook kids were quicker to use condescending language toward the MySpace kids.

“What we’re seeing is a modern incarnation of white flight,” Ms. boyd said. “It should scare the hell out of us.”

Others have mounted quantitative studies that confirm these divides. A December 2008 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that, overall, Facebook users are more likely to be male and have completed college, while MySpace users are somewhat more likely to be female, black or Hispanic, and to have not completed college. Since that study, however, Facebook has boomed and the social-network landscape has no doubt changed significantly.

More studies come from Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, who surveyed both 2007 and 2009 first-year college students, ages 18 and 19, at the diverse campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/does-social-networking-breed-social-division/?em

[Political Heretic]

1. There are lots of other possible explanations.

"White flight" may be a reality, but the underlying reasons for it may be quite complicated.

I know that when my friends and I made the shift to Facebook, it was because it appeared to use to be more friendly to use, and more oriented toward professional networking. It was easier for me to connect with other university students, my own cohort, etc. My university had a facebook group for our department, I was able to connect to other professionals in the community who used facebook. The biggest reason was that when I opened myspace I was bombarded with entertainment "junk" - blitzed with ads for music, events, pop culture stuff - ad placement was heavy and in your face, myspace felt geared to me for a younger crowd.

Facebook has changed a lot over time, and its certainly becoming more like myspace these days. But if there were more people like me who felt that facebook was a little more "adult" it could be reflective of a society in which whites are more privileged and more likely to have higher education levels and more opportunities for professional interaction. White privilege might explain the gravitation to a service that, at least in the beginning, seemed to focus more on adult networking opportunities and less on youthful entertainment.

I have a feeling that will even out, as facebook seems to be changing a lot to attract people who prefer myspace, while myspace seems to be changing some to attract people who prefer facebook...

About this comment: "the Facebook kids were quicker to use condescending language toward the MySpace kids." That makes sense to me. There is, sadly, a definite level of elitism among those who might be more attracted to facebook's structure - basically if you went to facebook because you are a budding professional seeing it as more likely to provide you with high quality netowrking options, you are also more likely to have a condescending attitude toward others that don't share your education level or interests.

These studies would mean more if facebook and myspace offered identical services in identical ways - but they don't.

[Chemisse]

3. Again, I wish we could rec replies

That was a very intelligent response. It makes a lot more sense to me than an intentional racial divide.

[lindisfarne]

6. Racial divides are very often based on subtle biases. Social psychologists have shown that biases

such as racism occur even in very liberal folks who would be horrified at this. Any intro social psychology text has info. on the research.

The original research in the OP was not claiming an intentional racial divide.

[SoCalDem]

2. Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace? maybe Foxification occured.

BBC NEWS | Business | What Myspace means to Murdoch
Jul 19, 2005 ... Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has bought fast-growing online community Myspace

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2F2%2Fhi%2Fbusiness%2F4697671.stm&ei=KAxXSsS2GpT0sgOnpL22Dg&rct=j&q=myspace+murdoch&usg=AFQjCNHu3tNyHhYqz8k4wNEoBHQ1JbTs9A&sig2=MLWEGIcykc-8y-Gr-e26Uw

[Horse with no Name]

4. I asked my daughter why she and her friends shifted

and she said the answer was simple.
More of their parents and teachers were opening up myspace accounts and they think that is really creepy.
So, they started migrating to facebook.
The problem continues to exist though. Now the parents and teachers are ALSO migrating to facebook.

[XemaSab]

5. With a shout-out to all the previous posters here's my guess

Networking with friends and people with shared interests is a big part of why I made the shift to FB a few weeks ago. I have quite a few friends on there, and all but two are over 30.

One of the big advantages to FB is that only my friends can see my profile information. Putting personal information on MySpace felt too... unprotected, somehow.

Maybe the "white flight" phenomenon has to do with a greater desire for privacy on the part of the more affluent.

[JVS]

7. It used to be that FB was only offered to email addresses connected to a university or college.

A natural result of this is that FB developed a core group of users that is likely to be more educated, richer, whiter, etc. At the same time Myspace was getting a bad reputation as being full of teenagers and pervs who wanted to prey on the teenagers. My experience with FB is that when I first got on, I was older than almost everyone I knew (most of my age are out of college, a few are still in grad school). Since I am mostly in contact with people from my hometown, I can say that there is a lag in black neighbors getting connected. The first people I noticed were younger siblings of classmates, then my own classmates, then people my older brother's age, finally I now see a few people my parents' age poking around and commenting on pics of their grandchildren. I would say that the lag was something along the lines of my black classmates were joining at about the same time as my brother's age group.