Our Blog: where do you stand?

Nielsen Says Social Class Linked to Social Networking Tools: Do You Agree

By: Marijean Jaggers | 10/13/2009

An article posted today on CNN.com asks, Does your social class determine your online social network? This caught my eye because it's something I've been saying for a while. In fact, I blogged about it in the post Facebook is the Suburbs, MySpace is the Ghetto, raising a few eyebrows in the process.

The numbers provided by Nielsen, at left, certainly back up the theories that claim more affluent users flock to Twitter, and the business community, whether they've fully engaged or not, have long had memberships within the business-focused social network, LinkedIn.

Then there's this statistic, which should make marketers take notice of LinkedIn, "Almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year." However, if it's consumer products or services you're selling, Facebook's female users over the age of 24 (you know, the people who make ALL the buying decisions) are a majority; if that's your audience, that's where you want to be.

This is the part of the article that made me do the Meg Ryan head tilt:

Nielsen isn't the first to find this trend. Ethnographer danah boyd, who does not capitalize her name*, said she watched the class divide emerge while conducting research of American teens' use of social networks in 2006.

When she began, she noticed the high school students all used MySpace, but by the end of the school year, they were switching to Facebook.

When boyd asked why, the students replied with reasons similar to Owens: "the features were better; MySpace is dangerous and Facebook is safe; my friends are here," boyd recalled.

And then, boyd said, "a young woman, living in a small historical town in Massachussetts said to me, 'I don't mean to be a racist or anything, but MySpace is like, ghetto.'" For boyd, that's when it clicked."

OK, OK, the ghetto comparison was not original when I said it, and I never claimed that, but really, if you Google "Facebook is the suburbs, MySpace is the Ghetto" what do you get?

My point being, we do not need an ethnographer (*who doesn't capitalize her name, no less) to tell us that the population has self-selected to join communities to which they have a sense of belonging.

Social class does NOT determine your social network, but YOU do - and it's likely that, as in religions, neighborhoods, clubs, hobbies and professional organizations, social networks that bring us together do so because of our similarities, not our differences. The lesson here is that if there's a segment of the population you're trying to reach, but to which you do not belong, it makes sense to join it, and to pay attention, to cultivate relationships by engaging with its members. As I tell my daughter about the perils of the Mean Girls in middle school and the many ways to make friends, look for those outside the group and no doubt you'll find something in common that might surprise you and result in a brand new friend.

Posted in Digital Communications