Class and SNS Revisited
October 16th, 2009 |
CNN takes a look at the MySpace/Facebook class divide:
A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.
More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users.
Although it was published the day after Jon Stewart hilariously destroyed CNN’s fact-checking standards, I thought it was pretty solid overall.
I wonder, though, if Facebook’s astronomical growth during this calendar year is going to reduce or even eradicate the class gap. As Facebook zooms past MySpace faster than anyone expected, even data collected six months ago is already obsolete. A plausible hypothesis would be that MySpace will see a mass exodus similar to the Friendster emigration of 2004, and all classes will gravitate toward Facebook (until the privileged classes find another site to flock to and escape the commoners…)
Cross-sectional studies are limited no matter what the context, but the pace of change in SNS behavior means cross-sectional studies of SNSs have a frighteningly small window of relevance. What if the massive growth of Facebook in the past 6 months has closed the class gap? We can’t know.
Eszter Hargattai recently repeated her 2006 study, finding that although Facebook had surpassed MySpace in popularity, the class differences remained. (Note: As of this post, Eszter’s website is down.) So her data and the Nielsen data suggest that the class gap remained as of earlier this year. But it’ll be interesting to see whether data collected now continue to replicate these findings.
I’ll be doing some cross-sectional SNS data collection in January and February of next year. And I guarantee I’ll be rushing to get it to print before it becomes obsolete.
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