Remember Xanga? LiveJournal? Friendster?
It’s hard to even remember how those social networking sites even worked when they and others have been almost entirely eclipsed by giants MySpace and Facebook. But MySpace’s star may be dimming as Facebook continues to become the electronic social hub of choice—for now.
When I was in high school, blogging sites like Xanga and LiveJournal reigned supreme. By today’s standards, these sites were quite simple, and didn’t allow for much customization beyond colour and font choices. But even with the near domination of these two sites, MySpace was growing in popularity every day. Soon after its release, it became the most dynamic and feature-filled social website, and I believe helped to define social networking as it is today. With MySpace, users were granted control over almost every aspect of their profile, and adding friends soon became the newest e-hobby.
Soon, however, as MySpace’s popularity increased among middle- and high-school students, it quickly transformed into a place where angsty pre-teens displayed disturbingly provocative photos of themselves, whined about their boyfriends (or lack thereof), and wRoTe Bl0gz liK th*S. Shakespeare would have been so proud.
The source of what some might call the “elitism” of Facebook lies in its history. Facebook’s origins lie in actual “face books” sold and distributed in American colleges and universities. These books were essentially yearbooks which were produced at the beginning of the academic year, so that university students could find out more about their new classmates. Those interested could submit pictures and short self-profiles for inclusion in the book. In 2003, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg had the bright idea to transport these face books to the web, and soon afterwards, what is now known as Facebook was born.
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook was created by university students, and was only accessible by university students. It gave students a clean, elegant way to present themselves in an online social network that distinctly separated them from the average MySpace crowd. It essentially became the more “grown up” way to network electronically, and later grew to include all manner of professionals and businesses, as well as high school students and celebrities.
Having been on each site for a number of years, it’s been quite interesting to see how each has influenced the other. Both sites now offer users unlimited picture galleries, spaces to tell the world “what’s on your mind,” and multimedia integration. Sometimes the features are so blatantly similar that it’s hard to remember exactly which site I’m on…until I see yet another typically MySpace friend suggestion, displaying the typical picture of a six-packed jock standing shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror and trying his best to look tough, or the 14-year-old girl wearing more make-up than a sci-fi movie villain, and a “skirt” that was actually sold as a belt.
To me, while MySpace and I certainly had our good times, I can’t help but perceive the site as distinctly “high school.” It’s basically an electronic popularity competition, and I’m not even being sarcastic: there are MySpace users, commonly known as “MySpace whores” who have profile “friends” simply for the sake of having a higher friend count than the next user. I’m having trouble finding the point in maintaining a membership to a website populated with users with such trite attitudes and approaches to relationships.
Danah Boyd, a Harvard fellow, suggested in a speech in July that the shift from MySpace to Facebook highlighted the fact that race and class divides even exist in cyberspace. She likened this shift to the “white flight” trend seen in America’s (and later in other nations’) communities in the 1950s and ‘60s, where, with segregation no longer legally accepted, blacks were able to move out of urban areas and into more docile suburbs, previously inhabited solely by white people. Often, those whites, who often benefited from better education and economic standing, then moved away to find more secluded and more affluent suburbs and towns in order to preserve their lifestyles.
Boyd contended that this “white flight” is now happening on the internet. In surveys Boyd conducted, high school students said that “the higher castes of high school [society] moved to Facebook” because it was “more cultured, and less cheesy.” According to one teen, “any high school student who has a Facebook profile will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious.”
To some degree, I can see the validity of Boyd’s argument of “e-flight” and the truth in her survey respondents’ replies. Facebook’s history as a university-student-only website , and its expansion into more professional realms, means that users will typically be more apt to present themselves decently, and that most users received or are receiving some form of tertiary education.
But is this move from MySpace to Facebook really a racial or socio-economic shift? I think not. Instead, I think MySpace has, unfortunately for its creators and moderators, been “type-cast” into being the more juvenile social networking vehicle. Many young people today are concerned with appearing older and more refined than they actually are, and this concern leads them to abandon the perceived “cheesy” nature of MySpace in favour of the more refined and elegant Facebook. As young people mature, perhaps enter universities, get “real” jobs, and generally become more independent, they almost invariably will change their online identities to mirror these lifestyle changes – they become less concerned with “cool” and more concerned with “classy.” Some might call the internet “the great equaliser,” able to unify all sorts of people – but they also forget that the people, and not any sort of network, decide
And then one has to consider that it might only be a matter of time until something else is released that makes even the mighty Facebook seem like the Kevin Federline (sorry, guy) of social networks. I do think that Facebook has tremendous staying power and appeal, but inevitably it’s only a matter of time before the next big thing appears (Twitter, anyone?).
Personally, I’m slowly starting to get over the whole social networking craze. I’m thisclose to deleting my MySpace profile, and even Facebook gets on my nerves occasionally. Not to say that I’m going to become some sort of keyboard-burning anti-networker, but who knows? Maybe the next phase in this “e-flight” is becoming absent from social networks entirely?
I love my Facebook picture gallery as much as the next guy, and some of those bumper stickers make me laugh so hard I develop an instant six-pack, but it’s a lot more fun to create “social networks” in person…
..trust and believe.
It’s hard to even remember how those social networking sites even worked when they and others have been almost entirely eclipsed by giants MySpace and Facebook. But MySpace’s star may be dimming as Facebook continues to become the electronic social hub of choice—for now.
When I was in high school, blogging sites like Xanga and LiveJournal reigned supreme. By today’s standards, these sites were quite simple, and didn’t allow for much customization beyond colour and font choices. But even with the near domination of these two sites, MySpace was growing in popularity every day. Soon after its release, it became the most dynamic and feature-filled social website, and I believe helped to define social networking as it is today. With MySpace, users were granted control over almost every aspect of their profile, and adding friends soon became the newest e-hobby.
Soon, however, as MySpace’s popularity increased among middle- and high-school students, it quickly transformed into a place where angsty pre-teens displayed disturbingly provocative photos of themselves, whined about their boyfriends (or lack thereof), and wRoTe Bl0gz liK th*S. Shakespeare would have been so proud.
The source of what some might call the “elitism” of Facebook lies in its history. Facebook’s origins lie in actual “face books” sold and distributed in American colleges and universities. These books were essentially yearbooks which were produced at the beginning of the academic year, so that university students could find out more about their new classmates. Those interested could submit pictures and short self-profiles for inclusion in the book. In 2003, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg had the bright idea to transport these face books to the web, and soon afterwards, what is now known as Facebook was born.
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook was created by university students, and was only accessible by university students. It gave students a clean, elegant way to present themselves in an online social network that distinctly separated them from the average MySpace crowd. It essentially became the more “grown up” way to network electronically, and later grew to include all manner of professionals and businesses, as well as high school students and celebrities.
Having been on each site for a number of years, it’s been quite interesting to see how each has influenced the other. Both sites now offer users unlimited picture galleries, spaces to tell the world “what’s on your mind,” and multimedia integration. Sometimes the features are so blatantly similar that it’s hard to remember exactly which site I’m on…until I see yet another typically MySpace friend suggestion, displaying the typical picture of a six-packed jock standing shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror and trying his best to look tough, or the 14-year-old girl wearing more make-up than a sci-fi movie villain, and a “skirt” that was actually sold as a belt.
To me, while MySpace and I certainly had our good times, I can’t help but perceive the site as distinctly “high school.” It’s basically an electronic popularity competition, and I’m not even being sarcastic: there are MySpace users, commonly known as “MySpace whores” who have profile “friends” simply for the sake of having a higher friend count than the next user. I’m having trouble finding the point in maintaining a membership to a website populated with users with such trite attitudes and approaches to relationships.
Danah Boyd, a Harvard fellow, suggested in a speech in July that the shift from MySpace to Facebook highlighted the fact that race and class divides even exist in cyberspace. She likened this shift to the “white flight” trend seen in America’s (and later in other nations’) communities in the 1950s and ‘60s, where, with segregation no longer legally accepted, blacks were able to move out of urban areas and into more docile suburbs, previously inhabited solely by white people. Often, those whites, who often benefited from better education and economic standing, then moved away to find more secluded and more affluent suburbs and towns in order to preserve their lifestyles.
Boyd contended that this “white flight” is now happening on the internet. In surveys Boyd conducted, high school students said that “the higher castes of high school [society] moved to Facebook” because it was “more cultured, and less cheesy.” According to one teen, “any high school student who has a Facebook profile will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious.”
To some degree, I can see the validity of Boyd’s argument of “e-flight” and the truth in her survey respondents’ replies. Facebook’s history as a university-student-only website , and its expansion into more professional realms, means that users will typically be more apt to present themselves decently, and that most users received or are receiving some form of tertiary education.
But is this move from MySpace to Facebook really a racial or socio-economic shift? I think not. Instead, I think MySpace has, unfortunately for its creators and moderators, been “type-cast” into being the more juvenile social networking vehicle. Many young people today are concerned with appearing older and more refined than they actually are, and this concern leads them to abandon the perceived “cheesy” nature of MySpace in favour of the more refined and elegant Facebook. As young people mature, perhaps enter universities, get “real” jobs, and generally become more independent, they almost invariably will change their online identities to mirror these lifestyle changes – they become less concerned with “cool” and more concerned with “classy.” Some might call the internet “the great equaliser,” able to unify all sorts of people – but they also forget that the people, and not any sort of network, decide
And then one has to consider that it might only be a matter of time until something else is released that makes even the mighty Facebook seem like the Kevin Federline (sorry, guy) of social networks. I do think that Facebook has tremendous staying power and appeal, but inevitably it’s only a matter of time before the next big thing appears (Twitter, anyone?).
Personally, I’m slowly starting to get over the whole social networking craze. I’m thisclose to deleting my MySpace profile, and even Facebook gets on my nerves occasionally. Not to say that I’m going to become some sort of keyboard-burning anti-networker, but who knows? Maybe the next phase in this “e-flight” is becoming absent from social networks entirely?
I love my Facebook picture gallery as much as the next guy, and some of those bumper stickers make me laugh so hard I develop an instant six-pack, but it’s a lot more fun to create “social networks” in person…
..trust and believe.
Nkosiyati Khumalo is the Chief Sub-Editor of VARSITY Newspaper, the official student newspaper of the University of Cape Town.
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