Checking Out Some Social Networking Sites

When MySpace became a big thing for my peers back in 2003, I found myself hesitant to jump on the bandwagon. Something about tweens who posted inappropriate pictures of themselves for all the world to see was pretty off-putting. Since then, things haven't changed all that much; people still post questionable photos of themselves. However, one thing that has changed for the better is the implementation of privacy settings. Younger MySpace users are wising up and making their profiles private.

Facebook, in comparison to MySpace, has an older demographic. While MySpace is populated with 13-21 year olds, Facebook has more users in the 16-35 age brackets. Though this doesn't equate to a squeaky clean image, Facebook users tend to make more well-informed decisions about what they post onto their pages. Although...I do stumble upon the occasional photo of college students having "a good time."

LinkedIn, in stark contrast to both MySpace and Facebook, is strictly professional. As a social networking site for people in the workforce, it contains information regarding education, employment history, etc. It's pretty much devoid of the personal touches you can find in MySpace and Facebook like photos, videos, and information about people's favorite bands.

From my observations of the aforementioned sites, one pattern has emerged: content found on social networking sites are extremely dependent on the demographic of users (and of course, the overall purpose of the social networking site).