What’s more interesting than these numbers is the way that users of the sites appear to break down along demographic lines. In an NPR story that aired on 10/21, students at an elite private high school in San Francisco explained that Facebook is “safer and more high class” than MySpace, which is “trashy.”

Another group of San Francisco teenagers—the mostly Latino, mostly lower-income students in an art class at a community gallery called Southern Exposure—had a different take on the difference between the two sites. As 19-year-old Diego Luna put it,

“I have friends who are white . . . They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”

Research supports the idea that race and class factor significantly into people’s social networking preferences. As social media researcher danah boyd (who prefers lowercase) told NPR, people tend to re-create online the same kinds of “neighborhoods” they inhabit in real life.

“Young people—and for the most part adults as well—don’t really interact online with strangers,” she says. “They talk to people they already know. You have environments in which people are divided by race, divided by class, divided by lifestyle. When they go online they are going to interact in the same way.”

No matter how vast the Internet may be, it seems that we identify and associate with small communities of people like ourselves. What are implications of this for the book world? Should publishers increasingly refine and tailor their offerings to specialized target audiences, or is it still possible to appeal to a broad and diverse readership?

COS has experienced exponential growth since 2006 (12 projects that year, according to the Times; 140 in 2008).  Their services are tailored to a wide range of budgets, from the bargain basement “Cover Story” (the only image is your book cover) for $300, to the “Platinum Teaser” (special titling, effects, photoshop scenes) for $2,500.  (To shoot an author interview, or a full blown trailer with a script and live actors, call for a quote.)  For a taste of the drama and intrigue that COS can create in a 36-second “Level 2 Mini Teaser” ($1,500), check out what they’ve done with Baited (2006), a romance novel by Crystal Green.  (Or for a more literary interpretation of the book video, see what Harper Collins did for Rivka Galchen’s critically acclaimed Atmospheric Disturbances [2008].)

Meanwhile, many authors on shoestring budgets are embracing the guerrilla marketing spirit, posting homemade book videos on YouTube, MySpace, their own websites, and elsewhere online. 

And why not bookstores? Green Apple Books of San Francisco, one of the best-loved independents in the Bay Area, is creating an atmosphere all its own with videos to promote its Book-of-the-Month recommendations. Created “in the lo-fi style” by SF-based French Press Films, these videos feature scruffy-looking but enthusiastic staff members hamming it up in testimonials, “dramatizations,” and “reenactments” related to the featured book. Can videos like these drive foot traffic to Green Apple or increase sales?  Green Apple Commercial #1:  Book of the Month!  (in which staff bolster their endorsement of David Benioff’s City of Thieves with a money-back guarantee) has been viewed nearly 1,200 times since it was posted in June 2008—although the only comment it has inspired (or provoked) is “dorks!”  Still, the videos have some infectious appeal, and they’re getting more sophisticated.  Their latest effort, Green Apple Commercial #7:  Conquest of the Useless!, shot “on location” with bookseller Stephen Sparks doing his best Werner Herzog,  is my favorite:

So we’re planning to use Twitter to make announcements about upcoming books and events and to get to know our Twitter friends better. It should be a lot of fun, so please join in and follow us at http://twitter.com/ThomasRiggsCo.