There have been some interesting studies/conversations about which young people are using what social networking site, basically what it means about you and your background if you are on MySpace all day versus Facebook.
The most recent one looks at the race breakdown of these sites, concluding that Asian Americans use sites like Xanga and Facebook way more than they are using MySpace.
Regarding race and ethnicity, the most pronounced findings concern students of Hispanic and Asian origin. Hispanic students are significantly less likely to use Facebook (60% compared to 75% or more for other groups), whereas they are much more likely than others to use MySpace (73% among Hispanic students compared to 58% or less among all others). In contrast, like White students, Asian and Asian American students are much more likely to use Facebook than others, but they are significantly less likely to use MySpace. Additionally, this group of students is especially active on Xanga and Friendster compared to others.
Have people noticed this? I don’t count in any of these surveys cause I’m old, but I did just join Facebook and it is easier on the eyes than MySpace. Xanga does seem to be a primarily Asian space. Does it matter?
Do people remember the early social networking spaces for Asian Americans like Asian Avenue and the now-defunct South Asian-focused ChaiTime.com? What are active/popular social networking sites specifically for Asian Americans now? And with Facebook, do people actually use these?
Posted by neela at November 6, 2007 5:28 PM
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My wife is Filipina-American, but she lived in the Philippines for 6 years. Even though she prefers Facebook, my wife uses Friendster a lot to keep in touch with her friends that are still in the Philippines since that is the most popular social network over there. Here are a couple TechCrunch articles about Friendster's popularity in Asia:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/friendster-plays-to-strengths-launches-in-chinese/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/25/friendster-up-40-more-web-20-cake-for-everyone/
Posted by: Darren at November 7, 2007 10:12 AM
Oh, Asian Avenue, I remember you. Did you know they revived it recently? I wonder how it's doing.
Posted by: Melissa at November 7, 2007 10:12 AM
it's definitely interesting that a lot of asians/asian americans do use xangas. heck, i used to have one myself. i don't really know why though. however, in terms of facebook, we have to remember that it did start out as a more exclusive thing. "elite" as some people choose to call it where you could only register for an account if you had a .edu email address from certain universities, like the ivy leagues. don't quote me on this, but i think it first started in harvard, then to the rest of the ivy league's, and then to other universities that are more "well known" such as u.c. berkeley. if we were to look at the make-up of the student population in those universities, it might explain why more asians/asian americans are on facebook (isn't berkeley's api student body at like 40% now?). this definitely says something about universities and their outreach programs for people of color. still an ongoing battle.
the other "simpler" explanation is just that hey, we go where our friends are. a friend of mine was on myspace because that was where all of her friends were. but now, she's an active facebook user because her friends have all migrated over. sometimes it takes just one person to lead the herd y'know.
Posted by: lisa at November 7, 2007 12:54 PM
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