IAP Political Forum

A Future S.A.T. Question?

By Stephen J. Dubner

MySpace is to Facebook as Yahoo! is to ___________.

The answer, according to Hitwise, is: Google.

Just as Facebook users are higher on the socioeconomic ladder than MySpace users, people who use Google as their search engine are better off than those who use Yahoo!. Google is most popular among users defined as “Affluent Suburbia,” “Upscale America,” and “Small Town Contentment,” while Yahoo! is most popular among “Struggling Societies,” “Urban Essence,” and “Blue Collar Backbone.”

And while this might indeed make a good S.A.T. question, by its very nature it would probably be nixed because of cultural bias.

If nothing else, it makes for a good parlor game. For instance: which search engine do you think everyone in the movie Juno uses?

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Myspace is to Facebook what Crack is to a Whore.