Cynthia’s Thoughts: MySpace and the Wall Street Journal? Huh?

More and more newspapers have added social bookmarking to their articles, including The Wall Street Journal. Generally, the serious newspapers, such as The New York Times and the Globe and Mail, allow links to articles through traditional sites such as del.icio.us and Digg.com as well as the social networking site, Facebook.  But the Wall Street Journal is different. They use MySpace. The other papers don’t even list MySpace as one of the choices, because the stereotypical MySpace user, at least according to Danah Boyd’s 2007 article, “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace,” is typically “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.”  Not quite the type of person one finds in the business world.   I understand that MySpace and WSJ both have connections to Rupert Murdoch, but seriously, WSJ and MySpace don’t go together. We’re not talking about Oreo cookies and milk here.  I don’t even think the typical MySpace user even knows about WSJ, let alone has seen its website.

While some people who are WSJ readers may have MySpace profiles, how often do they even check their site (unless they’re in a band)? I’m technically on MySpace, but the last time I logged in was over six months ago. However, I log onto Facebook every day. Those of us who missed the Facebook and MySpace generation as students, and entered the world of social networking in our mid 20s or later, generally see the latter as more disorganized and a little more artsy. It’s a place to promote your band, not to share WSJ type articles.

I can understand that Murdoch/his people may want to include MySpace as an option to share articles, but couldn’t they have included other sites?  Having MySpace only makes the WSJ look like they’re trying to be something they’re not.  LinkedIn is big in the business communities, the very segment of society most likely to read the WSJ.  They should at least add that.

Note: Prospere Magazine allows sharing of articles through a myriad of bookmarking and social networking sites, including Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook and more recently, LinkedIn.