Are NonProfits Perpetuating Class Divisions Online?

Interesting piece at a New Organizing Institute blog post of 9/30/09 which opens with quote from Sarah Perez blogging at ReadWriteWeb “about a new Nielsen Claritas study finding that Facebook users tend to be better off financially, while MySpace users’ income is generally lower. She opened saying:

Oh how the mighty have fallen. The one time king of social networks, MySpace, now has the honor of being the site where the less affluent members of the online population stake their claims by way of bedazzled profiles overrun with auto-playing videos and songs. Meanwhile, the upscale, financially solvent users have moved on – and by moved on, we mean to Facebook, of course.

After criticizing the condescending attitude of Sarah Perez, the New Organizing blogger goes on to say "As a movement, we need to ensure that we aren’t tricked into ignoring online tools that reach large and important segments of the population -- regardless of whether you like the design of one site over another. All too often, online organizing efforts have Facebook pages, but fail to reach out to MySpace users at all. According to a study released earlier this summer by Anderson Analytics , roughly 32 million MySpace users do not have a Facebook page. That is an awful lot of millions to ignore." (emphasis added)