clipped from: www.observer.com   
This morning, Danah Boyd was spitting out the social media Kool-Aid at Personal Democracy Forum. "Many of us believe that technologies can be these great equalizers," said Ms. Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, during her keynote speech at the Jazz at Lincoln Center auditorium. "They can bring everybody on board, they can make a welcome, lovely place and that anybody can participate in if only they had the access."
But in fact, she said, sites like MySpace and Facebook are mirroring, even magnifying, our social, political and class divides.
"MySpace has become the ghetto of the digital landscape," Ms. Boyd explained to the crowd. And many of us in these social environments, she said, "have gotten into the habit of crossing the street like we always do to avoid the riff-raff."