Danah Boyd, a sociologist and researcher in the U.S. who specializes in youth culture and online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, has posted a draft version of a new paper she is writing on what might loosely be referred to as "class divisions" between the two popular social networking sites. Although she says that the differences between the two audiences are not strictly class-based, in the sense that they don't really follow economic lines, there appears to be a clear difference between teens who gravitate to MySpace and those that tend to join Facebook.

For the most part, Ms. Boyd says, the younger users on MySpace are what she calls "subaltern" -- a term meaning subordinate, or lower in station -- in the sense that they are outcasts in some way or another, either because they are involved in a social sub-group of some kind (i.e., they are gay, or goth, or interested in punk music) or they are a member of a racial or cultural group that is non-mainstream (i.e., black, Hispanic, Asian, etc.). Teens that join Facebook, she says, are what she calls "hegemonic," meaning they are sympathetic to mainstream society in some way. As she puts it:

"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."

Ms. Boyd admits that some of these differences are likely a result of the ways in which Facebook and MySpace evolved. The latter started as a social network for music fans to share information about their favourite bands, whereas Facebook started as a social network that was restricted to university students and faculty -- and therefore has had a collegiate type of appeal ever since. The site started allowing high-school students to join in 2005 but they still required an invitation, and then it opened to everyone in the fall of last year.

The different approaches taken by MySpace and Facebook extend to design as well -- MySpace is much more chaotic and colourful, while Facebook is more clean and austere -- and therefore the ways that the two sites are perceived by their users is different too, Ms. Boyd says:

Teens who use Facebook see MySpace 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...  that "clean" or "modern" look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I'm drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace resembles the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year. I suspect that lifestyles have aesthetic values and that these are being reproduced on MySpace and Facebook."

Ms. Boyd has a blog post with comments about the paper here.

Update:

Nick Denton injects some of his patented Valleywag skepticism here. And Joey "Accordion Guy" deVilla was at a recent presentation at the Harvard Berkman Center on Internet and Society that Danah gave about her research, and he has an extremely comprehensive set of notes if you're interested in more detail. Danah has also posted her own thoughts on the reaction her post has gotten, in which she makes the point that her post was not designed to be a fully-researched and footnoted paper, but was simply a collection of her thoughts and impressions about the subject as a result of her ongoing research.