Facebook for Richer, MySpace for Poorer?

A new article by a University of California researcher is creating quite the buzz in the blogosphere. Danah Boyd is suggesting that there are significant class divisions between users of Facebook and users of MySpace. In her essay "Viewing American class division through Facebook and MySpace", Boyd suggests that Facebook is for better educated, higher income folks, while MySpace is for, well, the opposite.

As you can imagine, MySpace is pretty miffed and they are claiming to Business Week that over 20% of their folks make over $100,000.

And Facebook is sort of quietly enjoying their position. No doubt this article has already raced through their offices...

But what Boyd also notes that is getting less attention is why this may have happened, and she points to the formation of the sites for some clues. Lots of interesting stuff to consider. Check it out for yourself.

~Jim Tobin
Life Is Marketing

MySpace enters the Fashion Space

MySpace Fashion has launched, an effort by MySpace to chunk their massive user network into groups that advertisers will pay for. So far, they have 50,000 friends on the network. Look for it to become its own tab along with "music" and videos.

But the real reason is to find a way to host banner ads from fashion companies. Here's the challenge: Ads from which companies?

As AdAge points out in a good article, MySpace Fashion is currently running a banner ad for Bratz, which is a decidedly young demo. Is that the niche, or is it more mature, or more upscale. And will upscale brands advertise on MySpace, which isn't exactly a luxury brand. InStyle.com, on the other hand, has it right. They are serving up buckets of content via MySpace Fashion (the average visitor to MySpace Fashion reads 26 pages of InStyle's content), which helps extend their brand.

While MySpace works out the wrinkles, the fact remains that marketing via social media sites is here to stay. Let's hope some smart folks realize it's much more than banner ads.