There’s an awful lot in the press and the blogosphere about social networking these days. In particular about who will win out between MySpace and Facebook and the differences between them.

Danah Boyd, a researcher at the University of California and internet sociologist, goes a bit overboard in her reasearch findings, declaring that:

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.

Since Facebook opened its doors to all-comers in September 2006 it has experienced a meteoric rise. The formerly student-exclusive network has grown “down” to incorporate high school kids (ages 12-17 up 149% in the last year) and “up” to incorporate graduates and young professionals (ages 25-34 up 181%), with the established crowd still growing rapidly (ages 18-24 up 38%).

MySpace, it seems, is “so yesterday” for the aspiring and priveleged, but is still the place to be for the “alt” crowd:

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.

Whilst MySpace and Facebook clearly have the numbers (182m users and 34m users respectively if the current Wikipedia page is to be believed – and they increase ever day of course), for the business proprietor, contractor or careerist, LinkedIn (11m registered users) seems to me a better place to concentrate your efforts. You cannot do much on LinkedIn other than develop a network of business contacts. You cannot chat, post pictures, blog, write on “walls” etc. Instead you just focus on expanding your little black book. Your connections have connections who have connections and LinkedIn enables you effortlessly to establish contact with these more distant second and third degree connections.

So, for now, I’ve made a start developing a network on LinkedIn, will return to Facebook when I have time and am ignoring MySpace.