Digital Divide 2.0
According to Danah Boyd, MySpace has become a digital ghetto, following the online equivalent of white flight to Facebook. She doesn’t attribute this to any kind of active racism, but rather that offline racial and class divides are extending themselves onto the internet. The “Stuff White People Like” blog has smartly parodied this phenomenon.
Although the internet was initially a color-blind and unwalled neighborhood, the hidden hand of racism had no problem moving into the digital age. Kozmo.com, a casualty of the first internet bubble, ran a cool on-demand delivery service that redlined zip codes with a predominantly African-American population. Google’s unsuccessful attempt at an online social network, Orkut, devolved into a haven for various hate groups in other countries.
The takeaway? Don’t invest in services that promise to make the world less divided. It’s easiest to gain market share if you focus on dominating a tiny niche. Competing services that try to be all things to all people will, if they survive, diverge and inheriting a different segment of the audience.
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