From Digital Divide to Facebook Divide, Reconstruct our Target Market Segments with Facebook Native and Facebook Immigrant

Digital divide emerge since early nineties when popular internet come to age.  People forty-five or older than forty-five years-old are less likely to have internet access during their time as university students, and they are most likely to obtain web-based Internet related knowledge thereafter formally. The age of forty-five can be regard as the turning point age to distinguish people who may or may not have lesser knowledge on using the web-based Internet. The availability of Smartphone for the last 10 years help to increase the internet penetration rate and it also contribute to a wider digital divide. Digital immigrants and digital native are two connotations of these two groups of people.  Digital native is the generation of people born into the digital age and learn through digital means, while digital immigrant is the group of people who learnt to use computers and other digital related knowledge at some stage during their adult life. With the same logical thought, 2004 was a turning point of people who acquire Facebook knowledge in school or outside school. Facebook is the number one online social network in terms of usage in most of the top fifties countries. From 2004 and onwards students who joined Facebook are Facebook natives, while people who join and acquire Facebook skills outside collage and thereafter are Facebook immigrants. The two groups of people plus those who did not have access to Facebook constitute the situation of Facebook divide society. Facebook native and Facebook immigrant are the two major market segments,which marketers are dealing with in current years.  Facebook is the largest online social network and similar online social networks may dominant in different societies where society is divided as well. Secondary data on internet usage, Facebook usage, Facebook ranking, and participate observation on Facebook group & pages are applied for analysis. Reconstruct our target market segments shall be in place.