Does your social class determine your online social network?

 Like a lot of people, Anna Owens began using MySpace more than four years ago to keep in touch with friends who weren't in college.

Our real-world friendships are often a reflection of who we connect with online, experts say.

But soon she felt too old for the social-networking site, and the customizable pages with music that were fun at first began to annoy her. By the time she graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Owens' classmates weren't on MySpace -- they were on Facebook.

Throughout graduate school and beyond, as her network began to expand, Owens ceased using MySpace altogether. Facebook had come to represent the whole of her social and professional universe.

"MySpace has one population, Facebook has another," said the 26-year-old, who works for an affordable-housing nonprofit in San Francisco, California. "Blue-collar, part-time workers might like the appeal of MySpace more -- it definitely depends on who you meet and what they use; that's what motivates people to join and stay interested."

Is there a class divide online? Research suggests yes. A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users.

Social networking by the numbers

Users with household income above $75,000
Facebook -- 41.74 percent
MySpace -- 32.38 percent
LinkedIn -- 58.35 percent
Twitter -- 43.34 percent

Users with household income under $50,000
Facebook -- 28.42 percent
MySpace -- 37.13 percent
LinkedIn -- 17.34 percent
Twitter -- 28.36 percent

Female users
Facebook -- 56.33 percent
MySpace -- 56.69 percent
LinkedIn -- 48.11percent
Twitter -- 53.59 percent

Users aged 18 to 24
Facebook -- 10.27 percent
MySpace -- 15.46 percent
LinkedIn -- 3.99 percent
Twitter -- 9.51percent

Users aged 35 to 49
Facebook -- 31.54 percent
MySpace -- 29.09 percent
LinkedIn -- 43.64 percent
Twitter -- 34.02 percent

Source: The Nielsen Co.

MySpace users tend to be "in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods," said Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, which used an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. "They're on their way up, or perhaps not college educated."

By contrast, Mancini said, "Facebook [use] goes off the charts in the upscale suburbs," driven by a demographic that for Nielsen is represented by white or Asian married couples between the ages of 45-64 with kids and high levels of education.

Even more affluent are users of Twitter, the microblogging site, and LinkedIn, a networking site geared to white-collar professionals. Almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year.

Nielsen also found a strong overlap between those who use Facebook and those who use LinkedIn, Mancini said.

Nielsen isn't the first to find this trend. Ethnographer danah boyd, who does not capitalize her name, said she watched the class divide emerge while conducting research of American teens' use of social networks in 2006.

When she began, she noticed the high school students all used MySpace, but by the end of the school year, they were switching to Facebook.

When boyd asked why, the students replied with reasons similar to Owens: "the features were better; MySpace is dangerous and Facebook is safe; my friends are here," boyd recalled.

And then, boyd said, "a young woman, living in a small historical town in Massachussetts said to me, 'I don't mean to be a racist or anything, but MySpace is like, ghetto.'" For boyd, that's when it clicked.

"It's not a matter of choice between Facebook and MySpace, it was a movement to Facebook from MySpace," she said, a movement that largely included the educated and the upper-class.

So why do our online worlds, unencumbered by what separates us in daily life, reflect humans' tendency to stick with what -- and who -- they know?

A lot of it has to do with the disparate beginnings of MySpace and Facebook, said Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of Mashable, a blog about social media. Facebook originated at Harvard University and was limited at first to students at approved colleges before opening itself to the public in September 2006.

MySpace, on the other hand, had a "come one, come all" policy and made a mad dash towards monetization, Ostrow said. "They used a lot of banner ads without regard to the quality, and it really diminished the value [of the site] for the more tech-savvy demographic."

And while the Internet can build bridges between people on opposite sides of the globe, we still tend to connect with the same people through online social networks who we connect with offline, said technology writer and blogger Sarah Perez.

"It's effectively a mirror to our real world," she told CNN. "Social networks are the online version of what kids do after school."

These social-networking divides are worrisome to boyd, who wrote "Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics." Instead of allowing us to cross the boundaries that exist in our everyday lives, these online class differences threaten to carry those boundaries into the future.

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"The social-network infrastructure is going to be a part of everything going forward, just like [Web] search is," boyd said. "The Internet is not this great equalizer that rids us of the problems of the physical world -- the Internet mirrors and magnifies them. The divisions that we have in everyday life are going to manifest themselves online."

Jason Kaufman, a research science fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, examined the Facebook profiles of Harvard students over four years and found that even within Facebook, there's evidence of self-segregation.

Multiracial students tended to have more Facebook friends than students of other backgrounds and were often the sole connection between white and black circles, Kaufman said.

Nonetheless, Kaufman feels that social networks may one day help us overcome our instinct to associate with those who share our income level, education, or racial background.

"I think it's fair to say that the Web has great potential to at least mitigate everyday tendencies towards self-segregation and social exclusion," Kaufman said. "In some ways, [Facebook] levels the playing field of friendship stratification. In the real world, you have very close friends and then there are those you just say "Hi" to when you pass them on the street.

"The playing field is a lot more level in that you can find yourself having a wall-to-wall exchange with just an acquaintance. If you pick up the unlikely friend, not of your race or income bracket, the network may [help you] establish a more active friendship than if you met them in real life."

But MySpace's users still find something appealing about MySpace that they don't about Facebook, and it may have nothing to do with class or race, blogger Perez said.

"It's not just the demographics that have people picking one over the other," Perez said. "It also comes down to what activities you like. If you like music, you'll still be on MySpace. If you're more into applications, then you might go to Facebook because you're addicted to Mafia Wars or whatever."

In the end, boyd isn't as concerned about the reasons behind these divisions online as she is about the consequences of people only networking within their chosen social-media groups.

"Friendships and family relationships are socially divided; people self-segregate to deal with racism sometimes," she said. "Okay, fine: We've made a decision to self-segregate, but what happens when politicians go on Facebook and think they're reaching the whole public? What happens when colleges only go on Facebook to promote?"

When and if that does happen, Mashable's Ostrow said, we'll know perhaps we've given social networks more credit than they're worth. "When it comes to information, I don't think social networks are the best source for that. The Internet is so open," said Ostrow, who believes users would go beyond their networks to search out information online.

If you're looking to branch out of your social network box, your best option may be Twitter. Nielsen's survey didn't find a dominant social class on Twitter as much as they found a geographical one: Those who use Twitter are more likely to live in an urban area where there's greater access to wireless network coverage, Mancini said.

"The simplicity of Twitter definitely creates less of a divide, because it's not a relationship like it is on MySpace or Facebook," Ostrow said. "If you live in the middle of nowhere or you live in a city, you can follow anyone about anything'

Microsoft Launches New Phone Software

Microsoft Corp introduced new software for mobile phones on Tuesday, promising a range of devices to compete with Apple Inc's iPhone andResearch in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The world's largest software company, in partnership with phone makers and phone companies such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, AT&T Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, said more than 30 new devices with the new Windows Mobile 6.5 software would be on the market in more than 20 countries by the end of the year. The new phones can play music, open Word and Excel documents, and be synchronized over the Internet. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer played down recent industry talk that the company was developing its own smartphone. "We are not here to announce today that we are making phones," he said at an event in Paris. The market for phones is set to treble or quadruple in the next few years, Ballmer said, and Microsoft is ready to challenge other phone makers for market share. He added thatWindows Mobile's share of the mobile phone market is equal to Apple's. "We and Apple are neck and neck and we're chasing the two other players," said Ballmer, referring to Nokia, the world's No. 1 smartphone maker, and Research in Motion. Microsoft also announced a new online application store, where users can buy 246 applications for their phones

Oram retires from Test cricket

	Jacob Oram has played his last Test match
Players/Officials: Jacob Oram Teams: New Zealand

Jacob Oram has announced his retirement from Test cricket but will continue to play one-day and Twenty20 matches for New Zealand. Oram cited his ongoing injury problems as the reason behind his decision and he hoped that by cutting back his workload he would be able to extend his international career.

Oram, 31, recently returned home from the Champions Trophy in South Africa with a hamstring problem, the latest in a long and wide-ranging list of injuries. His troubles have included back and foot worries and have limited him to 33 Test appearances over a seven-year career.

He had spoken in the past of the options available to him to prolong his career and he said his preference was to give up Tests rather than abandon bowling. Oram has now done just that, following the lead of another injury-prone allrounder Andrew Flintoff.

"The last few years have shown that my body cannot handle the strains and stresses that come with being an allrounder, playing all three formats for up to ten months a year," Oram said. "For the sake of longevity I have had to make a decision that will decrease my workload, so I can concentrate all my efforts on the shorter forms of the game.

"The decision to choose limited-overs cricket over Test cricket has a lot to do with playing opportunities. The Black Caps play a lot more limited-overs cricket than Tests, and there's also the opportunity to continue playing in world events such as the World Cup, World T20 and Champions Trophy, as well as the IPL."

Another factor was the impending arrival of Oram's first child, due next month, which will give him extra incentive to spend plenty of time at home. Oram will remain on a New Zealand Cricket central contract and has his sights set firmly on the 2011 World Cup, although he said that ideally he would like to play for a couple of seasons beyond that.

On the Test scene, Oram scored 1780 runs at 36.32 and collected 60 wickets at 33.05. A powerful and clean striker of the ball, Oram struck five Test centuries, remarkably each time in the first Test of a series, and his highest score of 133 came in a crushing loss to South Africa in Centurion in April 2006.

It was an innings that Oram described as both his best and his worst. "You know you're not looking as good as you would like," he said at the time, "and your feet aren't moving as well as you would like, and you're not hitting the ball where you would like. But 133 is damn satisfying."

Oram struggled to have as much impact with the ball and his peak came early in his career when he collected 4 for 41 against India in Hamilton in his second Test. It was as close as he ever got to a five-wicket haul and in his last five Tests he managed only one wicket.

Oram did enjoy spending some time in the top five of the ICC's allrounder ranking list last year and he considered his bowling such a key part of his game that he was unwilling to give it up. He said he had attempted to delay as long as possible a decision about his future career.

"However in light of my latest injury at the Champions Trophy it has became clear to me that now is the time to sacrifice something to try and stay in the game longer," Oram said. "I have really enjoyed my Test career and I leave that format with many fond memories. I would be lying if I said I had no regrets, however these feelings were not powerful enough to make me reconsider this decision."

Justin Vaughan, the chief executive of New Zealand Cricket, said he understood Oram's decision. "Jacob has made a tremendous contribution to our Test team over the past seven seasons, and his experience will be missed," Vaughan said. "But we fully understand the difficulties he's faced with injuries and we hope this decision will help him prolong his playing career with the Black Caps."

Salman prefers fresher actresses The urge to be a star-maker has now hit Salman big-time. He realises he doesn't need a weighty leading lady to sho

Salman prefers fresher actresses

The urge to be a star-maker has now hit Salman big-time. He realises he doesn't need a weighty leading lady to shoulder a film. Most of his forthcoming films, including the ones on the floors, have new leading ladies instead of established actresses.

Boney Kapoor's sequel of Wanted - Most Wanted - is just one of the few. Prabhudeva will direct again. The film will have two fresh faces as leading ladies. Even his next film with Sajid Nadiadwala titled Sanki will have a newbie.

According to Boney, "Once you have Salman on board, it doesn't matter who comes on afterwards."
Strangely most of Salman's films with established heroines like Salaam-E-Ishq and God Tussi Great Ho (both with Priyanka Chopra), Jann-E-Man, Heroes (with Preity Zinta), Kareena Kapoor (Kyun Ki) and Katrina Kaif (Hello, Yuvraaj) have flopped, whereas films with new or less mainstream heroines like Tera Naam (Bhumika Chawla), Lucky (Sneha Ullal) and Wanted (Ayesha Takia) have clicked.

Facts u shud know about ur body

Our body is capable of producing aspirin

Eating fruits and vegetables may help the human body make its own aspirin. Findings from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry indicate that study participants who received benzoic acid, a natural substance in fruits and vegetables, could make their own salicylic acid, the key component that gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.

Taking a nap at work is good for your boss

A 20-minute nap can improve your overall alertness, boost your mood, and increase productivity. William Anthony, co-author of The Art of Napping at Work (Larson Publications, 1999), says the post-nap boost can last for several hours. In addition, your heart may reap benefits from napping. In a six-year study of Greek adults, researchers found that that men who took naps at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-related death.

Ejaculation may cause men to sneeze

Some men experience pain, headaches, or sneezing as a result of ejaculation. The increased activity in the nervous system during orgasm may be the culprit in triggering headaches. A possible explanation for the sneezing is that in the brain, the center for orgasms is close to the centers for yawning and sneezing.

Every person has a unique tongue print

Just like fingerprints. The tongue is a unique organ in that it can be stuck out of mouth for inspection, and yet it is otherwise well protected in the mouth and is difficult to forge. The tongue also presents both geometric shape information and physiological texture information which are potentially useful in identity verification applications.

White skin has evolved over time

It seems we were all black ones (consistent with evolutionary fact of first humans in Africa). White skin was a result of humans moving away from the equator. Also all skin, without coloring, would appear creamy white. Near-surface blood vessels add a blush of red. A yellow pigment also tints the canvas. Lastly, sepia-toned melanin, created in response to ultraviolet rays, appears black in large amounts. These four hues mix in different proportions to create the skin colors of all the peoples of Earth.

The foot is home to the body's thickest area of skin

The skin on the palms and the soles of the feet is 4 mm thick and the thickest skin in the body, the heel portions of the feet being the thickest portions. It's also got the most sweat glands than in any other area.

The body is taller in the morning than in the evening

The body is taller in the morning than in the evening. You might want to schedule that basketball game for first thing in the morning. That's because our bodies are on average about half an inch taller in the morning, thanks to excess fluid between our discs, which is replenished while we sleep. As the day goes on, and our bodies undergo the strain of standing, the discs get compressed and the fluid seeps out, so the body loses that small bit of extra height.

Humans glow in the dark

It was revealed by ultra-sensitive cameras that our bodies emit tiny amounts of light that are too weak for the human eye to detect. Amazing pictures of "glittering" human bodies were released by Japanese scientists who have captured the first ever images of human "bioluminescence". Although it has been known for many years that all living creatures produce a small amount of light as a result of chemical reactions within their cells, this is the first time light produced by humans has been captured on camera. Strangely, the areas that produced the brightest light did not correspond with the brightest areas on thermal images of the volunteers' bodies.

Body position affects your memory

Can't remember your anniversary, hubby? Try getting down on one knee. Memories are highly embodied in our senses. A scent or sound may evoke a distant episode from one's childhood. The connections can be obvious (a bicycle bell makes you remember your old paper route) or inscrutable. A recent study helps decipher some of this embodiment. An article in the January 2007 issue of Cognition reports that episodes from your past are remembered faster and better while in a body position similar to the pose struck during the event.

The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day

Even if you'd like to think you're too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day. Digestion causes the body to release gases which can be painful if trapped in the abdomen and not released.