The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other „good“ kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home 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. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Ich habe auf beiden Networks entsprechende Accounts – in MySpace logge ich mich etwa alle zwei Monate einmal ein. Facebook besuche ich einmal pro Woche (meist, weil sich wieder ein/e Bekannte/r angemeldet hat und mein „Freund“ werden möchte).

Die Argumentation von Danah Boyd nehme ich zur Kenntnis – für mich sind mehrheitlich Design- und Usability-Kriterien ausschlaggebend, welches soziale Netzwerk ich häufiger Besuche. Während MySpace etwa dem schweizerischen Partyguide entspricht (bezüglich Sicherheitslücken, veralteter Aufmachung, HTML-Code aus den späten Neunzigern und einem fragwürdigen Backend), setze ich Facebook mit Usgang.ch gleich. Usgang hat aus meiner Sicht das sauberste Design unter den vier Platzhirschen der Party-Portale.

Etwas später geht die Autorin des erhellenden Artikels doch noch auf diesen Gesichtspunkt ein:

Most teens who exclusively use Facebook are familiar with and have an opinion about MySpace. These teens are very aware of MySpace and they often have a negative opinion about it. They see it as gaudy, immature, and „so middle school.“ They prefer the „clean“ look of Facebook, noting that it is more mature and that MySpace is „so lame.“ What hegemonic teens call gaudy can also be labeled as „glitzy“ or „bling“ or „fly“ (or what my generation would call „phat“) by subaltern teens. Terms like „bling“ come out of hip-hop culture where showy, sparkly, brash visual displays are acceptable and valued. The look and feel of MySpace resonates far better with subaltern communities than it does with the upwardly mobile hegemonic teens.