Danah Boyd, a PhD candidate at the School of Information at University of California - Berkeley, recently wrote a short essay on the apparent social class division between MySpace users and Facebook users on her blog.

In her essay, she begins with a quick distinction between the users of each social network:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

When Facebook first came online, it was limited to Ivy-League students. Soon, however, more colleges were added, yet a college-style .edu email address was absolutely required. (Though this restriction has recently been lifted)

MySpace, on the other hand, started off primarily with bands and artists seeking their own “web space”. Teenage concert goers flocked to MySpace to view their favorite bands’ profiles and to create their own accounts. No college education required. Absolutely none.

And although both currently allow every Internet user to join, MySpace houses all the sexual predators. Are there none on Facebook?

With neither social network now requiring a college education, is the class division Boyd sees still in place? Is the strict Facebook layout more appealing to the upper-class student, with the flexible MySpace layout more eye catching to the lower-class student? And what does that say about you if you’re on both social networks? Or neither?

Let us know in the comments: Which social network do you ascribe to?

A few hours ago, Facebook rolled out their “Books” functionality to their “Marketplace.” This was, as HackCollege feels, the last major function that Facebook needed before becoming the be-all-end-all website for college students. Half.com might even go out of business because of this. Campus bookstores will go out of business. (Thank God.)

As it should, the Books Marketplace uses ISBN numbers to make everything easy. List books that you need for your classes, and it will notify you as those books become available at your school. Too cool. Too Neat.

So start saving some money and dismantling some money-grubbing corporations:

Facebook Marketplace Books

During the month of July alone, perhaps due to the Facebook Platform launching, HackCollege saw a tenth of its traffic come from Facebook-related searches, specifically for useful Facebook apps.

Google has spoken, and now we shall respond. Here are the Top 10 Golden Platinum Exclusive List of Facebook Applications for College Students (in no particular order):

Read on to your heart’s content »

Yesterday evening I trekked down to Seattle to check out one of the inaugural Facebook Developer Garages. Think a networking party with beer and laptops and above-average IQs.

There were two presentations, mostly talking about the technical workings behind the new Facebook Platform. The biggest point of the talks was to design to retain users. Sorry to say it, but the X Me application might not stick around forever. Their graphs (from what I could tell) showed that these one-trick pony applications aren’t cutting it.

Most of the audience members seemed eager to be there, ready to share their ideas and network. You won’t see all of the ideas materialize into cute Facebook applications, and even fewer will you want to use. By serving up a tour, however, Facebook is drumming up plenty of support for platform. You’ll see some truly ingenious applications, just not quite yet.

Stay tuned. Although the “killer app” (I hate that phrase) has not arrived–yet–expect an article soon about the best apps out there right now.

In another Microsoft-reminiscent swoop to incorporate third-party application features into Facebook itself, the Facebook Blog just announced the extension of wall posts into the realms of pictures and video. Cool.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money for a fancy MacBook or Sony Vaio, so I can’t do some field reporting with PhotoBooth (or the Sony equivalent).

This is all great and is an expected improvement. The thing that’s most concerning, however, is that Facebook seems to be squashing smaller, original third-party apps. The Super Wall Application, a third-party application with an identical feature-set that boasted 2,849,543 total users today, will inevitably suffer. Sure, these wall additions are nothing major. But the limited potential of Facebook applications allows the big (and maybe bad?) Facebook to copy any idea willy-nilly. And Facebook is the landlord. So when fancy-pants analysts say that Facebook is the next Microsoft, they could be right, but not in the way they originally thought.

We’ll keep an eye out for you, Facebook. Until then, I’m going to litter my friends walls with pictures of kittens.

Facebook has been on fire lately - due mostly to the release of the new Facebook platform. It seems as though new applications are developed every day. But before there was the Facebook platform, users could add new functionality to Facebook through the use of scripts and Greasemonkey. Below are some of my favorite scripts to enhance your Facebook experience.

NOTE: To use any of these scripts you must be using Firefox and have the Greasemonkey extension installed. Download Greasemonkey here.

• Facebook Fixer - Adds recently added, updated and online friends sections on the main menu, Enlarges profile pictures when hovering over them, adds links to view all friends, groups, notes and items on profiles, and more.

• Facebook News Feed Ad Nuker - Simply removes all the “sponsored” ads from Facebook’s News Feed.

• Facebook Autologin v2 - Will automatically login to your Facebook account as long as your password is stored in Firefox.

• View Photo in Album - This will add a link above photos to view them within their albums, and it works even if your not the person’s friend.

• Facebook Auto-Colorizer - Changes Facebook’s color scheme based on the profile picture.

There are tons of other scripts to customize Facebook and other websites at Userscripts.org.

Use another awesome Facebook script? Leave us a comment!

Everyone woke up yesterday to the fruition of the new Facebook Platform and all of its related third-party applications. For those that missed the boat, this is a big deal and it seems cool. It’s like buying third-party gadgets for your iPod, except you put them inside. Let’s face it, no one likes an iPod burderened with FM transmitters, battery chargers, and the like.

The Rush

I, like everyone else, started adding any application that looked cool. iLike music service. 30 boxes calendar. Box.net file storage. Oodle Band Tracker. And then it hit me. I’m MySpace-ing my Facebook. What have I come to?

Read on to your heart’s content »

According to the Facebook Blog, the illustrious site will unveil some sort of new “Facebook Platform.”

The new platform allows developers to essentially reprogram Facebook, not a luxury that most companies award to their users. This news has TechCrunch (and thereby digg) abuzz. We’ll see if anything cool results.

-Kelly Sutton

P.S. Germany is fun.

Well, Oodle Classifieds was #1 for about 5 minutes. Facebook now has its own “Marketplace”. Login, and you’ll see it. I mean, everybody is talking about it.

So unless Oodle decides to give away free beer, I’m going to have to free up that slot in my Top 30 Facebook Groups.

Welcome to Oodle Classifieds! Now instead of just sending tons of spam via Email, graduating seniors can now also advertise their couches and textbooks and TVs and lamps and everything else via Facebook. Sweet.

Join the Oodle Facebook Group!