Zuckerberg's Facebook
I thought it was extremely interesting to see how Facebook got its start. I had always heard little bits hear and there about the creation of Facebook but I never got the full story. And there's probably more to the story than what is in the article "We Media" by John Cassidy. Facebook grew literally overnight. In 24 hours of it being created it had an estimated 1200 to 1500 users. It was exclusively for Harvard students and became so popular that Zuckerberg opened it up to more universities. Now Facebook is used by high schoolers and parents. It is also used in other countries. The Facebook phenomena is booming.
I didn't get a Facebook account until I got to college. I thought that MySpace was stupid and never had one and I thought Facebook was going to be stupid too, until i got one. It is so highly addictive I love it and it's a great way to procrastinate from doing homework! It's a really good way for me to stay in touch with friends and I love looking at other people's pictures. I guess that would classify me as a Facebook creep but everybody does it and if you say you don't, you're lying. Many members of my family have created Facebook profiles like my uncle, which I think is weird but hey, it's open to everyone right? Even my friends' moms have Facebook. There are some trendy moms out there.
I do have some concerns with Facebook. First of all, it has gotten way creepier in the last two years. The news feed lets you see when people wrote on someone's wall, when they posted comments on pictures and who they became friends with. Granted you can delete your daily activities on the news feed and I think you can even block them, but why have it at all? I don't care who wrote on so and so's wall and so on. The news feed makes me feel like a stage five stalker, and I'm not at all. Second, even if you delete your Facebook profile, comments you left on people's pictures and other things are still on the website. Deleting your profile doesn't necessarily get rid of your profile trail. Facebook just created a new rule that whatever you post on Facebook is fair game for them to use. Recently, there was an article about this in The Daily. You give up your privacy rights a bit. I don't want things that I've done to still be on Facebook after I get rid of it.
One last thing that I fear about Facebook is the fact that more employers are asking prospective employees to show them their Facebook page. I hope that never happens to me. I wonder if you can just change the name on your Facebook profile and then tell employers you don't have Facebook. Maybe that won't work but there has to be some way to get around it.
Facebook is engrained as a part of the college experience and I don't see myself giving it up any time soon. I don't think I would give up Facebook no matter what changes they've made to it (maybe that's a bad thing?). So thanks Mark Zuckerberg for creating such a wonderful distraction!