facebook = the virgin radio of social networking

[avv.livejournal.com]

I just noticed Facebook publish aggregate statistics of what users in each geographical network list as their top interests. The music listings are... totally depressing. I only looked at the ones in the UK (you can't get listings for the UK as a whole), but you can get them for US cities as well in the 'Browse All Networks' bit.

Aberdeen 1 Muse 2 The Killers 3 Snow Patrol 4 Razorlight 5 Oasis 6 Coldplay 7 Bloc Party 8 The Kooks 9 U2 10 Foo Fighters	Brighton & Hove 1 Snow Patrol 2 The Killers 3 Razorlight 4 Muse 5 The Kooks 6 Oasis 7 Bloc Party 8 Foo Fighters 9 Coldplay 10 Radiohead	Bristol 1 Snow Patrol 2 Muse 3 Razorlight 4 The Killers 5 The Kooks 6 Oasis 7 Jack Johnson 8 Foo Fighters 9 Bloc Party 10 Coldplay	Dundee 1 The View 2 The Kooks 3 Snow Patrol 4 The Killers 5 Oasis 6 The Beatles 7 Razorlight 8 Placebo 9 Kasabian 10 Stereophonics	Edinburgh 1 Snow Patrol 2 The Killers 3 Muse 4 Razorlight 5 Oasis 6 Radiohead 7 The Kooks 8 The Beatles 9 Coldplay 10 Jack Johnson
Glasgow 1 Snow Patrol 2 The Killers 3 Muse 4 Razorlight 5 Oasis 6 The Kooks 7 Radiohead 8 Foo Fighters 9 Coldplay 10 The Fratellis	Leeds 1 Oasis 2 Razorlight 3 Snow Patrol 4 The Killers 5 Muse 6 Arctic Monkeys 7 Kasabian 8 The Kooks 9 Bloc Party	Leicester 1 Snow Patrol 2 The Killers 3 Oasis 4 Razorlight 5 Muse 6 Kasabian 7 The Kooks 8 Bloc Party 9 Arctic Monkeys 10 Coldplay	London 1 The Killers 2 Snow Patrol 3 Razorlight 4 Muse 5 Oasis 6 The Kooks 7 Bloc Party 8 Radiohead 9 Coldplay 10 Arctic Monkeys	Manchester 1 Oasis 2 The Killers 3 Razorlight 4 Snow Patrol 5 Muse 6 The Kooks 7 Arctic Monkeys 8 Kasabian 9 Foo Fighters 10 Dance
Newcastle 1 The Killers 2 Oasis 3 Razorlight 4 Snow Patrol 5 Muse 6 The Kooks 7 Arctic Monkeys 8 Kasabian 9 Bloc Party 10 Foo Fighters	Nottingham 1 Oasis 2 The Killers 3 Snow Patrol 4 Razorlight 5 Muse 6 Arctic Monkeys 7 The Kooks 8 Bloc Party 9 Kasabian 10 Coldplay	Plymouth 1 Oasis 2 Muse 3 Razorlight 4 Snow Patrol 5 The Killers 6 Jack Johnson 7 Foo Fighters 8 The Kooks 9 Incubus 10 Bloc Party	Portsmouth 1 Snow Patrol 2 Muse 3 Razorlight 4 The Killers 5 Oasis 6 The Kooks 7 Foo Fighters 8 Coldplay 9 Bloc Party 10 Jack Johnson	Sheffield 1 Oasis 2 Arctic Monkeys 3 Razorlight 4 Snow Patrol 5 Muse 6 The Killers 7 Bloc Party 8 The Kooks 9 Kasabian 10 Foo Fighters
Wales 1 Snow Patrol 2 Razorlight 3 The Killers 4 Oasis 5 Muse 6 Foo Fighters 7 Stereophonics 8 The Kooks 9 Jack Johnson	West Midlands 1 Snow Patrol 2 Oasis 3 Muse 4 The Killers 5 Razorlight 6 The Kooks 7 Bloc Party 8 Foo Fighters 9 Kasabian 10 Arctic Monkeys

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Depressing but not surprising, really. Even social networking sites where you expect the users to be actively interested in seeking out new music (such as last.fm) have similar favourites. Add in Fezbuch's hordes of non-music orientated users and bingo! Virgin FM.

The only surprising artist in that list is Incubus for Plymouth! (Hahahaha and 'Dance' for Manchester, love it).

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

"'Dance' for Manchester"

It takes very few people to skew the stats like this - one of the 'top books' for one of my networks was 'do magazines count'. Still, I would have hoped that this would have skewed the stats more in favour of awesomeness, so I'm pretty much debating this with myself now.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the top result in each category was actually "Oh a bit of everything as long as it's good"?

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Although it is worth pointing out that Music is the no.1 interest in pretty much every network.

(also amusing is the fact that Drinking makes it into the top 10 interests, and often top 3, in just about every British network and none of the others I looked at!)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

this is aggregated from what people put on their profiles right? which tends to be "stuff which makes me look cool.credible"...actually it's just as depressing that people think these bands will make them look cool. god british people are LOSERS. though similar lists for US colleges are just as bad really.

exception and BEACON OF HOPE - some college called douglass (hein? where?):

1 Rap
2 R&b
3 Rock
4 Gospel
5 Dem Franchize Boys
6 D4l
7 Ciara
8 Chingy
9 Anything That I Like That Sounds Good
10 And T.i

Sojourner-Douglass College

[koganbot]

Google finds several different Douglass Colleges, but my bet is that it's this one.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the people who like this stuff relate to it - is it just "good music" or does it still have an anticontext, an idea that its an alternative to something (most of these bands started out that way, after all). I genuinely don't know.

What I do know is that if I was Chris Martin I would be pretty worried by these stats.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it definitely has an anti-context. Lex is right wrt looking credible thing, and where credibility is concerned there is almost certainly a big heap of anti-context lurking around somewhere.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

It's not really what people in those areas *like*, though--it's what people are most *likely to include* on their profiles. So while loads of people might like loads of esoteric things, if they only include The Killers as their one mainstream band, that still counts in the The Killers numbers. I mean, I like a lot of bizarre things, but I also like Muse--and loads of people are likely to include them in their potentially widely-varied lists too.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

This is what I was going to say and now I don't have to - ta.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Argh, out of the 17, 13 of them have the same top 5, a permutation of Muse, Oasis, The Killers, Razorlight and Snow Patrol. And for two of those others have just stuck The Kooks at 5 and Oasis at 6.

Winners, 11-position as the scores.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Snow Patrol: 149
The Killers: 137
Oasis: 129
Razorlight: 127
Muse: 117
The Kooks: 78
Bloc Party: 35
Arctic Monkeys: 31
Foo Fighters: 30
Kasabian: 23
Coldplay: 19
Radiohead: 13
Jack Johnson: 13
The View: 10
The Beatles: 8
Stereophonics: 5
Placebo: 3
U2: 2
Incubus: 2
The Fratellis: 1
Dance: 1

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

So The View's popularity and success is entirely down to the people of Dundee? They don't appear in any Top 10 except their home town, where they are #1? I think we know who to blame then.

Remind me never to go to Dundee.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I am very proud to say I have none of them on my list. Hooray!