The following cultural divisions have allegedly been drawn in a recent “preliminary draft” of research from Danah Boyd (a PhD student at UC Berkeley, which is reason for skepticism on it’s own.:) ) It’ll be interesting to see what the final report looks like, but the preliminary results are worthy of testing by savvy New Media marketers.
From our experience with 30-plus crowd in the major social networks, MySpace is home to more direct sales/network marketing types while FaceBook tends to be more college grads (but mostly corporate worker bees.) LinkedIn and eCademy are where you’ll find more business owners and high level executives.
Social sites reveal class divide
|
A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.
|
The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.
|
By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.
|
The conclusions are based on interviews with many teenage users of the social networking sites by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.
|
“Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus ‘class’,” she wrote.
|
By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tends to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.
|
“MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers,” she said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Paul Micek is a co-founder of the international business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc. He and his partner Deborah are authors of the hit book Secrets Of Online Persuasion and creators of BLOG i360™; the pushbutton easy system for small business owners, marketers, and sales professionals who want to get more customers and cash online using New Media. You can reach J.P. at [krazycapitalist@gmail.com]
|
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
RSS
Printer friendly version, click here
Email This Post
June 26th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Certainly a different way of looking at Social Networks - and will doubtless be of interest to the Marketers. But I suspect that as the networks grow, the Class effect will become watered down. We’ll see.
My own view is that the ‘digital divide’ will widen, putting clear blue water between Social Networks and Social Business Networks. That’s not to say that it will become open season for companies and brands to market their stuff in Business Social Networks - they will need to learn new skills to interact with and add value to their target community.
We’re already starting to see a number of companies starting online business clubs or ‘mini social networks’ on Ecademy, where they are engaging very successfully with consumers, without them feeling that they’re being advertised to.
You can find out more about how this works at http://www.ecademy.com/user/philipcalvert&xref=53930
Philip Calvert
Keynote Speaker on the Business of Social Networking
June 26th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Spot on Philip with your comment “they (businesses) will need to learn new skills to interact with and add value to their target community.” That’s the key to marketing successfully with New Media.
But… I don’t believe the help they need will come from “New Media experts” who don’t have substantial sales, marketing, or business ownership experience. The combination of business thinking with New Media knowledge is critical to not get sucked into situations where business people can get ambushed by time-vampires.