This research article, Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites, reports on a research study by Eszter Hargittai in Communication Studies and Sociology at Northwestern University. It finds connections between use of social network sites and a person’s gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background.
One difference between this research and previous studies, which allowed them to reveal these patterns, is that it disaggregated users by site. Instead of lumping all social network users together, they separated them into Facebook, Myspace, Xanga, and Friendster. They found striking differences among the sites. For example, Asians and Asian Americans are much more likely to use Xanga and Friendster than Myspace or even Facebook. Sixty-five percent of Asian American social network users are on Xanga, and 94% are on Friendster, versus 31% on Facebook and 21% on Myspace.
Another difference between this study and previous ones is that it surveyed younger people- mainly 18- and 19-year-old college students. So instead of looking at the education level of the users, they look at the education level of their parents. They found that users of Xanga, Facebook and Friendster have more highly educated parents than users of Myspace.
I think there are more interesting facts to be found here, but I’m not sure what they are. I would be curious to know if the answers to the following questions can be found in this article or elsewhere:
What percent of social network users are Asian American?
What percent of people use social networks?
What percent of Asian Americans use Xanga?
What percent of Xanga users are Asian American?
etc.
The most surprising result of this survey to me is that only 30% of Asian-American social network users are on Facebook. I would have thought it would be a lot more.
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Ernie wrote:
Good post, Lily. (It should be known that before my current position at Yahoo!, I worked as one of the developers for Yahoo! 360 and acted as de-facto Community Manager.)
People always forget that with every social network, a core community pops up for each social network. Every web developer on these sites will always plan to make a website for everyone - EVERYONE - but the people who work on sites like these do notice the core community members, and will make tweaks to make sure they retain these core members and keep them happy.
It’s unspoken, but these are the core groups the following social networks caters to:
Xanga: Asian Americans, Canadians, Asian Canadians
Friendster: (early) Burning Man attendees, (early) gay men, (current) Southeast Asians - Singaporeans, Malaysians, Filipinos, etc
MySpace: “Middle America”
Facebook: 20-30 year olds, comfortable to affluent due to its college roots
Yahoo! 360: “Middle America” over the age of 35, Vietnamese college students, some Vietnamese Americans
LiveJournal: (early) “counterculture” kids, (current) Gay bear subcultures, (current) Russians
Point being - people usually hang out with their “tribe,” and where people similar to them are, they go as well. Same goes for community websites on the Internet.
Posted on 19-Jan-08 at 12:35 am | Permalink
Mike wrote:
Interesting info here!
P.S. Though this is second-hand data, I’ve heard that:
Bebo: British
Orkut: Brazilian
Hi5: Black
Posted on 21-Jan-08 at 12:03 am | Permalink
Efren wrote:
So why are all of us on Facebook?
Posted on 23-Jan-08 at 2:48 pm | Permalink
akrypti wrote:
I thought Orkut would be Indian and Hi5 would be ASIAN-Asian.
Posted on 24-Jan-08 at 1:23 am | Permalink
Lily wrote:
Some interesting info:
http://www.quantcast.com/xanga.com/demographics
http://www.quantcast.com/yelp.com/demographics
Both Yelp and Xanga index highly Asian- that bar graph means that there’s almost three times as many Asians on Yelp and Xanga as compared to the rest of the internet.
Posted on 29-Jan-08 at 7:57 am | Permalink