danah boyd is a modern anthropologist who explores digital social networks, like Myspace and Friendster and Facebook. Her latest paper shows a growing digital divide between MySpace and Facebook.

I mention this, because some of us storytellers lept into these sites, and encouraged others to do it to... because this is where our audiences were going.

Looks like we storytellers have thrown our lot in with the freaks and geeks:

Quote:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities. MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

I, for one, am happy to hang out with my fellow members of the high school chess club, dungeons and dragons club, and underground literary zine.

Lest you think either site is sooo 2006, here are some recent stats:
Facebook: 25 million users. Half of them visit daily. Average user spends 20 minutes on the site. 2% of all internet traffic. Growth is remarkable, it's averaging 3% a week since Jan. 2007. 85% market share among US college students.
MySpace: 106 million accounts. Currently averaging 5% of all internet traffic. 80% of social networking site market.

Read the whole paper here.

And fascinating discussion here.

_________________
Tim E
http://www.storyteller.net/tellers/tereneta
http://www.myspace.com/storiesbytim
http://storytelling.blogspot.com
http://storytellersunplugged.wordpress.com