[Air-l] social network migration

[David Brake]

On 19 Jun 2007, at 23:08, Martin wrote:

> When I did research for my MSc dissertation the young people that I
> interviewed were all on www.bebo.com (Ages from 11 to 15). This was  
> two
> years ago, the older of the group have migrated to myspace, but  
> this also
> drags the younger members along with them.

In my sample of (ten) MySpace users I interviewed quite a few of them  
used to be Bebo users (both Martin and I are in the UK where Bebo is  
more popular for younger kids than it might be in the US for  
example). My interviewees said if I remember that they moved because  
of the more customisable profile features of MySpace and because  
there were more bands on MySpace but I imagine the perception that  
Bebo is for younger kids may have something to do with it too. I  
personally suspect that much of MySpace's current userbase is likely  
to abandon it in favour of Facebook (or blogs or nothing) as they age  
and it will be dependent on attracting a continual stream of new high  
schoolers.

While thinking about SNSes I wonder how long it will take for senior  
academics to take to SNSes and which one they will pick - Facebook is  
an obvious possibility but I suspect the difficulty of having to  
project one image for one's students and another for fellow academics  
will be too hard to overcome. LinkedIn seems too corporate-focused to  
me. Has anyone seen any signs of academic-focused social networking  
sites that might take off?

---
David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London  
School of Economics & Political Science
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ 
mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/  
(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog)
Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ 
dealingwithemail/>
callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)


Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm