I just listened to an interesting segment on NPR looking at the demographics of those on Facebook vs. MySpace. Seems FaceBook is the “whiter” and more affluent of the social networking sites. I know many of our congregations and UU organizations are on Facebook now. I am. Also have a uuplanet.tv fan page. No MySpace thought…
Listen to the NPR segment (from October 21, 2009). What do think? Should our association (congregations, UUA staff groups, publications, etc… ) all maintain pages on FaceBook AND MySpace? And what will be the next new thing? Will we have to be on that too?
I’ve heard social networking sites described as evolving neighborhoods. Given this, we’re always going to have to determine who we are trying to communicate with and choose the appropriate online environments. At least there are more tools being developed to help manage content over multiple social networking platforms. I’m on a waiting list for a service called Atom Keep (in Beta) that is designed to manage multiple social network profiles and content submission.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one website for your congregation with a content management system that allowed you to check off which social networking sites you wanted the content item shared with, consolidated statistics, comments and other management tasks?
Twitter Note: I have a uuplanet Twitter account and will say that the four hundred or so people following this account seem fairly diverse.
Source: This NPR story came to my attention via Rev. Dan Harper ‘s blog.
I actually have far more friends of color on Facebook and my impression is that Myspace is pretty much back to being all about bands. I still have my page but no one ever checks it.
If you have a myspace page, I suggest you use real caution with how you design it as myspace will let you go overboard in ways facebook won’t and I’ve known many otherwise normal people who felt like they needed pale pink myspace pages wiith white writing and pictures of fairies or something equally unreadable and bizarre.
My ex-housemate’s Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/renaessance is pretty subdued by comparison, which says something.