The Mods and the Rockers

How do you characterize society? Is it Red versus Blue State or is it the MySpace versus the Facebook nation? "A six-month research project has revealed ... American teenagers ... using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education." The UC Berkeley study further concluded that ""Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," she wrote."

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And it's not just social division either. The researcher asserts that the shy, pimply guys tend to use one social networking platform rather than another. Carrie, had she really existed, would have been on MySpace.

Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".

This kind of research plays very well with those who view society through the prism of Class. But Techscape isn't buying it. "The main problem with this mostly ridiculous project is that Facebook wasn’t always as open to membership as MySpace. It wasn’t until September last year that Facebook allowed anyone outside a list of just over 30,000 universities and schools to join."