Birds of a Feather Flock Together and Other Sticky Situations on MySpace and Facebook

In the article "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace,” Danah Boyd discusses some “sticky” issues concerning MySpace and Facebook.

Both of these virtual communities are relatively new. MySpace was launched in 2003 and Facebook in 2004. At this time, both communities serve large populations of young people.

Contrary to the superstitions of some, most members of MySpace and Facebook are not “networking.” In other words, they are not using their virtual communities as avenues to seek connections with absolute strangers.

In the article "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship," Boyd & Ellison distinguish between the terms “social network” and “networking” as follows: "Networking" emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites [online social communities], it is not the primary practice on many of them. . . . What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather. . . these meetings are frequently between "latent ties" (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection."

As part of their community involvement, users are encouraged to create profiles that express their individual interests. Research indicates that in selecting the appearances of their profiles, users reflect even more about themselves. When visitors look at various profiles, they gravitate toward others who seem most like themselves. This discovering and connecting with the familiar becomes a cohesiveness—a glue that binds people within social groups. Thus, it is the “stickiness” that holds the networks together and brings users back again and again.

In the virtual world, it seems that it is also true that "birds of a feather flock together."

As researchers began to analyze which community various individuals tended to select, another type of stickiness began to surface--the kind of stickiness that seems to be pervasive, when attempting to say something that is awkward.

Although it seemed inappropriate--or perhaps tasteless--to mention it, Boyd began to note that people of the working class--the less educated--seemed more at home in MySpace and people of the more professional class seemed more at home at Facebook.

As she mentioned this trend, Boyd acknowledged that people don't generally like to openly admit issues having to do with social class. She acknowledged that the discussion was a "sticky" situation.

I don't know whether this suggests that virtual snobbery is alive and well; but it does seem to suggest that a virtual line has been drawn in the virtual sand of the virtual communities.

boyd, danah. 2007. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace ." Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24 . http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.htm