Don't tell that to Isabella Galeazzi, a student at a Southern California middle school who says all the coolest kids in her classes can still be found on MySpace. Old people, she says, inhabit Facebook and celebrities have taken over Twitter.
And those elaborate, page-building graphics MySpace is known for? The ones that drove some of the over-50 crowd right over to Facebook when they couldn't figure out how to work them?
"That's my favorite part," Galeazzi says. "I've got icons that explain my mood, and backgrounds that are really colorful, and cool pictures and all kinds of stuff."
Galeazzi isn't interested in becoming one of the 200 million people on Facebook, but she is as addicted to MySpace as Staub is to Twitter.
Galeazzi estimates she spends three or four hours a day on it.
"Friends get mad because I can never hang out with them at the mall," she says.
Sociologist Karen Sternheimer says that's the attraction of all social networking sites. No matter how flashy or simplistic, they provide a chance to interact with others in a way that requires the least possible personal commitment.
"It allows people to maintain the most superficial of relationships without any kind of investment," Sternheimer says
MBC of MO @ May 15, 2009 10:32:05 AM