Digital Apartheid?

Ooops - she's at it again! Every so often Danah Boyd does an analysis that brings un-PC differences to light in Social networks. This time its race (last time it was class...see here).

And, one suspects, this time (just as the last time) - she has exaggerrated it a tad for publicity (surely not because - you would no doubt be surprised to hear - there is a book to flog?) - GigaOM:

The book chapter is entitled “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook,” and is part of a book called Digital Race Anthology, which is being published later this year by Routledge Press. In it, Boyd describes how during her research in 2007, one teenaged interview subject named Kat said that she didn’t like MySpace any more because it was what she called “ghetto”:

It’s not really racist, but I guess you could say that. I’m not really into racism, but I think that MySpace is now more like ghetto or whatever.

Boyd says that this kind of comment in a number of interviews drove home the point that “Facebook went beyond simple consumer choice; it reflected a reproduction of social categories that exist in schools throughout the United States. Because race, ethnicity and socio-economic status shape social categories, the choice between MySpace and Facebook became racialized.” Later on, Boyd uses the metaphor referred to in her chapter’s title when she says that one way to understand the shift that teenagers appeared to make in 2007 from using MySpace to using Facebook is to see it “through the lens of white flight” — that is, the departure of white and middle-class residents from inner-city neighborhoods.

Digital White Flight, Ghettoisation, incipient racism, class and income inequality - marvellous stuff. Its a pity battered women and asylum seekers can't be shoehorned in too (wait for the 2nd Edition - Ed)

As GigaOm imples, (and this would be our hypothesis too), MySpace is a last-generation SocNet, and it was overtaken by a nerwer and better executed design, and also had a "last generation" user base - music fans etc - rather than Chatterati.

Facebook has also arguably done a far better job of monetizing and expanding its social network and its features, while MySpace has not had much success, despite repeated attempts to monetize its user base through the use of widgets and other features. Could it not be that one network prospered because it was just better, easier to use, offered better features and was better managed? And that the other has declined because it is ugly, the user interface is terrible, and all you can do is listen to small snippets of largely irritating music? Does it necessarily have to be driven by some kind of “white flight” from an online ghetto?

It was also bought by a large corporate just as the Next Generation hit the scene, so the ability to innovate was removed at a critical time.

Overall I like her stuff on privacy, but I think her stuff on web demographics is skewed because it looks too narrowly - I think two of the comments on the GigaOm page explained the bigger picture well - this one:

Can PhD’s (or microsoft employees) really be this dumb? Have they ever heard of something called the ‘network effect’? Or how about studying the reasons behind why Microsoft’s OS became even more dominant in PCs than Facebook is now in social media.

Or, acknowledge that Fox utterly mismanaged MySpace. Or…and maybe she was too busy to learn this, but there are ZERO BARRIERS to join Facebook.

This is embarrassing in its complete dumbness. (Not you, Matthew, but Doctor Boyd.)

Ignore the ad hominems, but the points about causes other than race or class are well made - and also this:

Facebook started as a university only social network, which yes may mean demographically more white people but I don’t think race is really a factor.

MySpace offered more customisation, music on member pages – but all in all a more chaotic experience. And it looked to school kids that as you went to university you grew up and onto Facebook. Kids always want to be more like adults, so when Facebook opened up – those that previously had to wait until they were 18 to join, could now do so at 15 or 16, and then younger.

Facebook was also the independent alternative to MySpace which has been owned by Murdoch’s Fox Interactive for quite a while. The individualism is what made MySpace different to Facebook – but that “individualism” was under massive corporate control. This meant removing copyrighted music from people’s profiles and more policing in general.

Even without the ability to share copyrighted music on MySpace profiles, it remained the place for musicians and bands to have their homepages. But since then MySpace has regressed as a music platform. They started having ads with audio (very annoying when you want to listen to the music by the band whose MySpace page you’re on) and more intrusive ads in general. It remained very difficult until quite recently to make a MySpace page look good with the customisation tools they offered. They didn’t offer good user tracking to bands. They didn’t introduce a DRM-free music store and allow the bands to sell their music quickly and easily. Basically they completely dropped the ball.

The fall of MySpace has little to do with race, and even little to do with Facebook except that they had a critical mass of users so were waiting in the wings to pick up the slack. MySpace just threw it all away and I would be surprised if it still existed in 5 years at all.

Incidentally, I read this week that Twitter has a more valuable/professional/dynamic/upmarket demographic than Facebook now....and (shock) its more MALE!

We eagerly await the cries that Twitter is a White Male bastion....